


Delta

by Lucifra



Series: One Insurgent Butterfree Flaps its Wings [1]
Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon (Anime), Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types, Pokemon Fan Games, Pokémon: Insurgence (Fan Game)
Genre: An incredible display of Dr. Fuji's lack of scientific ethics, Breaking the Fourth Wall, Canon-Typical Violence, Clones, Cross-Posted on FanFiction.Net, Delta Pokemon, Fake Science, Legendary Pokemon, Mega Evolution (Pokemon), Nonbinary Character, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pokemon Training, Pokemon cults, Psychic Abilities, Psychic OC, Queer Character, Self-Insert, Shiny Pokemon, Talking to Pokémon, ask to tag, counting canon as pokemon insurgence that is, eventually, gravity shenaniganry, guess who they are - Freeform, otherwise it is more than is canonical in english, persistent mega Pokémon, tournament
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-17
Updated: 2020-11-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 20,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25341316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lucifra/pseuds/Lucifra
Summary: The story of how Amber Fuji came from failed clone to Augur of Torren, saving the world in the process.Updates every other Friday.
Series: One Insurgent Butterfree Flaps its Wings [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1753819
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25





	1. S1E1: Rebirth

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome, dear viewers, to the story of Amber, future Augur of Torren. At this point, I’m looking to focus more on the dealings she ends up having with the cults than the gym challenge, but there will be some gym content.
> 
> I do plan on doing some time skip stuff, between major story arcs (in my eyes) as breaks between “seasons” of this fic, where I’ll be uploading other, shorter stories, just FYI.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The beginning of Amber’s story.
> 
> I know that, in the original story, Ambertwo didn’t have a body, per se. For the purposes of this work, she was given a body by genetically combining Mew’s genetics with those of Dr. Fuji’s daughter. There’s other things that I changed in order to better tell the story, including the order in which the clones would have died.
> 
> Also kudos to whoever figures out where the chant that saves Squirtle comes from before the reveal comes later on.

The nature of the multiverse is such that, for the most part, universes are discrete.

That is, they’re separated fairly firmly. Most of the time, Prince Chrom of Ylisse doesn’t meet and duel the Augustrian Prince Seliph in Grado’s castle, Tony Stark and Ted Kord don’t cooperate on a scientific project, and Ash Ketchum normally doesn’t meet the Augur of Torren.

Normally, in this case, is the key word.

Helix watched, from their inscrutable throne outside the normal dimensions, as a plane of Insurgence and a world where the foremost hero was Ash Ketchum collided.

While not unprecedented, there was something different about this instance.

Helix brought more of their attention to bear on the worlds in question, searching for the as-of-yet unnamed factor that separated it from a normal crossover event, and then, unfortunately, found the exact cause behind this phenomenon.

Dome had gotten their grubby claws all over the Insurgent world, and from what Helix could glean, nudged Reukra just enough so as to destroy the universe and several that surrounded it several years hence.

This would not do.

Helix scanned the other world in the equation. While incapable of directly undoing Dome’s vile manipulation, they were capable of providing a counterbalance. Eventually, they chose their champion, a teal-haired child that had the potential for greatness locked away within their genetics.

The spirit was weak, though. Too weak to properly live-even as Helix watched, it was fading into nothingness.

Casting about in the rest of the multiverse for something to repair and bolster the soul to be able to match the flesh, Helix seized another soul, freshly bereft of a body, then pressed it to the fading spirit and fused them together with a spark of their own power.

After a heart-stoppingly eternal instant, Helix felt the fused entity take hold in the body, and the power they had imbued it with reach out and influence the world around them.

As the demiurge of this particular portion of the multiverse felt the entity begin to influence the lines of fate across the slowly-merging planes, they relaxed. All there was now was to watch and wait.

* * *

“... and the stars are the little lights that twinkle all night, just so we won’t feel alone in the dark!”` Amber giggled, then gasped as she started to vanish in a shower of blue sparks.

“What’s wrong, Amber?” asked Mewtwo, worried. “What’s happening?”

“It feels… like it’s time…” Amber’s voice faded out in midsentence as a light began to glow from within her chest, growing in intensity until it made looking in Amber’s direction nigh on impossible.

“Amber? Amber!?” Mewtwo’s calls became more frantic as he saw Charmandertwo, Bulbasaurtwo, and Squirtletwo start to fade out as well.

The light faded to an aura of visible psychic power around a taller, older body that kept Amber’s deep blue eyes (which now glowed), but had longer, curlier hair that darkened from teal through purple to black at the ends framing a darker-skinned face. “Mewtwo?” She blinked, then looked around.

“Amber? What happened?” Mewtwo’s eyes were wide and his chest was heaving.

“Mewtwo, listen to me very carefully. The three of them are dying. I need your help to keep them alive.” Amber floated forward, then set her hands on Bulbasaur’s head.

“Okay? How can I help?” Mewtwo floated forward, placing his hand on Amber’s shoulder.

“Just channel power into me.”

“O-okay.” Mewtwo started glowing with power, and after a moment Amber started glowing too. Gradually, a shell of deep purple crystal grew around Bulbasaur, and her skin started turning an odd pink color.

Once the cocoon stopped growing, Amber turned to Squirtle, then frowned. “Mewtwo, I need you to help me find something in my memories. It’s a chant starting with ‘For it is in passing that we achieve immortality’.”

“Why?” Mewtwo pressed his other hand to his forehead nonetheless, still searching for the memory.

“Because-” Amber shuddered, head twitching to the side, then continued. “Because I need to supercharge Squirtle’s aura and this is the best way I know how to.”

“Got it!” Mewtwo shouted, then Amber’s eyes started glowing.

“For it is in passing that we achieve immortality, through this we become a paragon of virtue and glory to rise above all. Infinite in distance and unbound by death, I release your soul, and by my shoulder, protect thee.” As Amber progressed along the chant, she started glowing with a deep purple light, which intensified the longer she had spent chanting.

Once she finished chanting, Squirtletwo glowed with a deep red light as her shell and skin both darkened to black.

“Charmandertwo!” Mewtwo floated over to the transparent spirit of his fellow clone, then put his hands on both sides of the Fire-type’s head. “I won’t lose you either!”

The both of them glowed with raw power, and even as Amber floated over, reaching out, the two exploded apart in a shockwave of energy. Amber was caught in the backlash and was sent tumbling tail over tea kettle away.

Charmander was much more solid, but as they watched, its flesh grayed and started to flake away while its tail-flame guttered out. Both Amber and Mewtwo stabilized themselves, then turned back and rushed towards Charmander, but Amber stopped when she saw a purple flame ignite at the tip of its tail. She looked over at Bulbasaur, then smiled as she saw it stretch, shattering its crystalline casing and revealing a pale purple bulb and pink skin.

Mewtwo wrapped his arms around Charmander, shaking, then stilled and relaxed when Charmander returned the embrace. “What… what happened? Did it work?”

“Everything hurt, and then you came and helped!” Charmander’s voice was cheerful, and her tail undulated calmly.

Amber sighed, and some of the tension left her body language. “Good, I’m glad that worked.” Then, she frowned. “Although I’m not entirely sure why I can understand you, Charmander.”

“Oh, that’s simple! You’re psychic!” Amber blinked, then turned her head to the side and angled it down.

“What.”

“Yeah, you’re psychic! I don’t know why, you weren’t before, but you are now.” Charmander shrugged, then wiggled free of Mewtwo’s grasp, dropping for a moment before she managed to become insubstantial enough to ignore gravity. “Hey, that’s neat!”

Amber pinched the bridge of her nose and sighed. “Wait, but isn’t Squirtle a daaaaagh!” She doubled over, hands clutching at her leg, which twisted before their eyes.

“Amber? Amber, what’s happening?”

* * *

“Dr. Fuji, the starters…” A white-coated woman stared at the three Pokémon in question.

“What has happened to them?” Had he known more about the variances in Pokémon forms that Torren (or Alola, or Galar) held, he might have been able to identify them as from one of those places. Alas, he was so concerned with Mew and the Pokémon of Kanto that he disregarded the (well-substantiated, even in Kanto) existence of alternate Pokémon forms.

“We don’t know, sir. Their vitals started to weaken, and then they started to change. It looks like some kind of spontaneous mutation.” She rewound the stored data of their biological processes, then allowed them to play, paired with the security footage showing the three Pokémon changing.

“And what about Amber?” Fuji turned to the tanks the clones were suspended in, then stalked forward, moving to a place where he could see the tank that he was using to reincarnate his daughter.

“Well, she was the first to have massive vitals fluctuations.” The young child that Fuji remembered had quite obviously grown to more-or-less adulthood. The next thing that he noticed made him gasp and step back.

“What has happened to her leg?” The appendage in question was twisted, with the foot pointed inwards.

“We don’t know, sir. Based on what happened to the other Pokémon, we’d have expected some kind of genetic mutation, we’re not entirely sure what happened to Amber.”

Fuji sighed. “As much as I hate to admit it, this batch of clones is a failure.”

“Ah, sir?” The woman raised a finger. “As a matter of fact, the Mew clone didn’t experience any kind of mutations. As a matter of fact, it displayed a nearly unprecedented level of energy channeling. We suspect that that, somehow, caused the mutation.”

“Even if that is the case, it speaks to the instability of this method of cloning. No, we will have to dispose of these mutants, then use the serum and make Mewtwo forget.” He closed his eyes and clenched his jaw. “Make it so.

“Yes, sir.” She scurried away to do his bidding, leaving him alone.

For a time, he stood in silence, looking at the tank that held his daughter’s failed clone until it was taken away. Then, he just stood, staring at the wall, before he turned on his heel. “I promise you, Amber. I will get you back someday.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so I know that the timeline doesn’t quite line up with what I’ve written in the other stories in this universe (since this one links the timeline of Insurgence fairly closely to the events of the Kanto arc of the anime). But there’s going to be a… well, I’m not going to say a completely logical reason, but one that’s at least consistent-ish with the rules of this particular world. It’s gonna be a long time in coming, but it will come.
> 
> As of uploading this chapter, I have the next episode fully written, and episode 3 is most of the way done.
> 
> First Uploaded 07/17/2020
> 
> Edited 07/18/2020 for consistency with future chapters.


	2. S1E2: Chains are Meant to be Broken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Amber and the Deltas escape Fuji's Island.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here’s S1E2.

Eventually, Amber uncurled herself, finding herself alone and surrounded with darkness. She felt around her for a light, but before she found one, she saw a light from under a doorframe, and then the door in question pushed open, showing-

“Charmander? Squirtle?”

“Yep!” The Ghost/Dragon type hopped off of Squirtle’s shoulders, then walked into the room. “Took us a while to find you.”

Amber pushed herself into a sitting position, then looked around. From the other flat tables in the room, she guessed that it was a morgue of some sort, and from the look and feel of the simple clothes, she made the logical leap that they (who “they” was being a mystery) had thought her dead. “”Well, not that I don’t appreciate it, but where’s Bulbasaur?”

“Oh, she’s going to go find us a boat so we can get off the island.” Squirtle’s voice was shockingly deep for her small stature.

“Alright, that’s helpful.” Amber swung her legs off the table-or at least tried, since her right leg was twisted inward and also strangely resistant to normal motion. “Well then. That’s unfortunate.”

“Stay here, I’ll go find you something to walk with!” Before either Squirtle or Amber could say anything, Charmander had scurried out of the room.

“Before Charmander gets back,” said Squirtle, “I just wanted to thank you. You saved both Bulbasaur and me, and I know Mewtwo used something that he found in your mind to help Charmander.”

“I-Gah!” Amber pressed her palms to her eyes as if she could use them to press the headache out of her head. “I’m sorry, but I don’t remember what happened in there, not really.” Seeing Squirtle’s curious look, she elaborated. “I can remember some things, but when I try to remember everything that happened-” she twitched, then scrunched her eyes closed- “it hurts too much to properly remember.”

Squirtle nodded. “Just because you don’t remember doesn’t mean you didn’t do it.” She knelt, bowing her head. “I cannot pay back such a debt as I am now. I beg your permission to travel with you and grow stronger so that I may one day discharge my debt to you.”

Amber blinked, then shook her head gently. “You don’t have anything to pay back, Squirtle.”

“Be that as it may, I still feel very much indebted to you for what you’ve done for me, and I would still like to stay by your side as a sworn retainer.” She looked up, hopefully.

Amber closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them. “I would be honored if you stood by me as a friend, Squirtle.”

“Very well.” Squirtle nodded sharply, then returned to her feet. “I shall do my utmost to be worthy of your friendship.”

Charmander chose that moment to return with a bar of metal a few inches taller than Amber and tapered, with one end about the size of a nickel and the other with more or less double the diameter, or at least it would have been if it didn’t end in a wide paddle. Trailing her was Bulbasaur, who smiled as soon as she saw Amber.

“Oh, good, you’re awake.” To Amber, Bulbasaur’s voice had a distinct Scottish cant. “We’ve found a boat and got it ready to go once you’re ready.”

“Squirtle, did you try to swear yourself into her service?” Seeing the Dark-type nod, Charmander threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, Squirtle. That’s so you of you!” Charmander patted Squirtle on her shell. “Never change.”

Amber reached out her hand and the oar tugged itself gently out of Charmander’s grasp, slowly and shakily floating over to her glowing with a blue-white aura. She took hold of it, then used it to brace herself as she dragged her unresponsive, twisted leg off the table, then dropped down. She managed to prevent herself from faceplanting, then took a few test steps to get her balance. “Thank you three for coming for me.” A few more steps towards the door, and then: “Lead the way, Bulbasaur.”

* * *

After about twenty minutes of Amber stumbling down the halls, the four of them managed to make it outside into the light of a new moon, after which time Amber was much more capable of balancing on her bad leg by dint of trial and error (mostly error), although she had eventually caught onto a more optimal method of moving on.

Another five minutes after that found them at the docks on what Amber vaguely remembered from another life (or perhaps this one) was probably New Isle or something like that. The boat that Bulbasaur had chosen wasn’t particularly large, but it did have a cabin-like structure and an outboard motor while still being small enough that, if push came to shove, they could row it along.

Bulbasaur had, somehow, already made preparations to cast off as well as gathering enough food for the four of them for a week, which confused Amber.

“What do you know about psychometry?” the Psychic-type asked.

“Uh… Object-reading, right?” Seeing Bulbasaur nod, Amber blinked, then looked at the little Pokémon with newfound respect. “That’s one hell of a talent.”

Despite the inherent implausibility of a quadrupedal lizardlike creature with legs less than a foot long shrugging, Bulbasaur managed it all the same. “I guess, but it’s not like I’ve had it for very long.” Bulbasaur ambled off to check on the motor, leaving Amber standing, both impressed and confused.

Eventually, she shook off her indecision and went to go untie the lines keeping the boat secured to the dock, leaving one still tied for the moment.

With that done, Amber limped over to where Bulbasaur was checking on the engine, a fair few parts lying on the deck around her. “What are your orders, Cap’n?” she asked with a grin.

Bulbasaur huffed out a laugh. “You don’t have to call me that, Amber.”

The young woman in question shrugged. “I know I don’t have to, but… well, comedic value is comedic value, and the readers want to laugh.” She frowned as a thought struck her. “Hey, what about Mewtwo? Aren’t we bringing him?”

Bulbasaur shook her head sadly. “He’s too well secured. We’re not… we’re not strong enough, unless you can actually use your psychic power in combat. Even if we were, there’s a storm coming, and I don’t want to be caught still moored here when that gets here.”

Amber made a curt gesture at a bucket, intending to send it flying across the boat to slam into the wall, but the most reaction she caused was to make it fall over and roll until it smacked into a bench and stopped. “Guess not,” she drawled. “If only my leg wasn’t all fucked up, then I might be able to keep up in a fight physically.”

“Then we won’t be able to get him out safely.” Bulbasaur frowned. “Even if you could fight on a level with a Pokémon, we’re not strong enough to keep up yet, not properly.”

Amber closed her eyes, her jaw clenched, then opened them. “We’ll get stronger, then we’ll come back for him. Te lo juro, on the stars and the sun.”

Bulbasaur nodded. “It was never in any doubt.”

Amber nodded to her, then limped off towards the cabin, where Charmander was standing, back to her. “What’re you up to?”

“Oh!” She jumped, then turned. “Amber, you startled me.” She blinked a few times, then shook herself. “As for what I’m doing… well, to be honest, I’m just killing time.” She shrugged. “Bulbasaur’s got everything else taken care of, so I figured I might as well look at what kind of tools we’d have to use in case we had to fix things, but I forgot that I wouldn’t quite know what they’d do, so…”

“I mean, you had good intentions. If you want, I can help you with-”

“There are people coming!” shouted Squirtle, who was standing atop the cabin for some reason.

Almost immediately, Bulbasaur responded. “Not ready to leave yet! I need two more minutes!” Then, she turned back to the engine and started replacing the parts she had removed.

Charmander floated up, gauging the distance between the boat and the approaching group, then shook her head. “They’ll be in range in just about that long. It’s gonna be close if we want to get away without them seeing us.”

“Well then, let’s buy some time.” Amber limped over the gangplank and then unlooped the last rope keeping them attached to the dock, then returned to the boat, pulling the gangplank aboard after her and then planting the oar she was using as a staff on the dock and giving a solid shove, which sent her falling backwards.

“Stupid bad leg,” she growled, then pushed herself onto her knee and wrapped her arms around the hull. Thus braced, she shoved at the dock again, producing much better results this time.

The boat slowly drifted away from the dock. Unfortunately, the crowd was approaching faster than they were receding, and a few of them already had Pokémon out. As they watched, a Raichu and Magneton both sent bolts of lightning at them, but thankfully there was enough distance between the Pokémon and their targets that they missed, and Amber took the cover that the flashes provided to push herself to her feet.

Bulbasaur shouted “Got it!” just before they heard the engine roar to life, and the three that hadn’t been adequately braced lurched as the boat nearly shot out from under them, but Charmander and Squirtle grabbed onto Amber’s other hand and prevented her from falling over.

Hearing a  **CRACK!** from the direction of the shore turned the heads of all four on the boat, and the shining of light reflecting off of something traveling in a parabola vaguely in their direction explained things.

“Great, railgun,” Amber muttered under her breath. “Brace my leg!” she shouted, trying to gauge where the projectile would come down.

She felt both Squirtle and Charmander grab hold of her leg just below and above the knee faintly, as if instead of corporeal Pokémon they were helpful clouds of fog. Regardless of the sensation, she let her weight return to proper balance on her legs, then spun the oar in her hands as she had a quarterstaff in another body.

The particle approached, an almost comical whistling sound preceding it, and she twisted left, bringing her right hand and the blade of the oar, edge turned sideways so as to have the most leeway to smack the projectile, up in an arc that just so happened to intercept the projectile, which drilled most of the way into the oar and sent the three stumbling back, off-balance but alive.

By this point, they were too far from the island for anyone to hit them reliably, albeit not for lack of trying.

Amber plopped down on a bench, then brought the blade of the oar up to reveal what looked like a knife, if that knife had decided that it was entirely too heavy and had decided to resort to extreme measures to achieve slimness. With a blade more reminiscent of a rapier, it had a surprisingly complex crossguard, one decorated with what Amber would later recognize were primarily Steel-type Pokémon.

As she tugged on it to try and wiggle it loose, she brushed her thumb up against what she would later recognize as the eye of an Aegislash, and the blade shot out like a cat that had decided that it no longer wanted to be inside, thank you very much. As a consequence of this, a fair portion of the oar had been sheared off.

“Wow.” After a moment, Amber pulled the now-rapier up, admiring its edge. “I think I’m keeping this.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hope y’all enjoyed.
> 
> This late post is not something that is gonna happen super often, I was moving today and just now got set up.
> 
> I hope this clears some things up about my comment last week.
> 
> I’m in the market for a content beta- the betas I currently have are pretty good, but they’re less content and more form. If you’re interested, hmu.
> 
> Read, Comment, and Review, please.


	3. S1E3: Typhoons and Titans

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the storm picks up… the boat?

Amber had talked Charmander and Squirtle into holding the oar steady so she could carve it down into a more traditional quarterstaff after having been mostly ruined by the blade by the time Bulbasaur spoke up. “I think the storm’s coming this way.”

Amber frowned, then licked her finger and held it up, which told her the wind was coming from behind the boat. “Hmm… I mean the wind has been picking up, so…”

As if on cue, the wind blew her long blue-black gradient hair into her face, and as Amber looked up, pushing it behind one ear with one hand, she saw a massive thunderhead slowly rolling across the sky as if being called by mother for an inevitable punishment-slowly, yes, but it would arrive eventually and at that time the storm would begin on an unfortunately literal level.

Squirtle squinted at the squalls behind them, then looked back to the others on the boat. “Okay, time to get inside. It’s almost hailing back there.”

“Hailing? It isn’t even September yet!” replied Bulbasaur, frowning. In response to a curious look from Amber, she said, “There was a date and time clock in the boatyard.”

Amber nodded, then turned to look at the encroaching storm, frowning, before she winced. “It doesn’t feel quite right. The storm, that is. Ach, how do words…” She absently tapped her thumb against her leg as she tried to put what she was feeling into words. “I think… I don’t think this is a true storm.”

Bulbasaur frowned, reaching out psychically, then recoiled. “I think you’re right. It feels like a massive Trick Room, but stronger. I wonder what’s causing it...”

The four clones filed into the cabin, then closed the door, with the slowly-crescendoing wind outside muffled by the solid steel slab sealing the cabin.

Amber sat down somewhat gingerly, then took a look around the (somewhat crowded) cabin. At first it was only lit by the flickering spirit-light on Charmander’s tail, but after a moment, the part of Bulbasaur’s crystal that was peeking out of her bulb started to glow with a soft pink light.

In the illumination provided by the two Pokémon, they were now able to properly see what was present inside the cabin. Beyond windows towards the prow of the boat, there was also a console next to a ship’s wheel (that, as they would soon lament, was only secured by two bolts), that after a moment Bulbasaur said was connected to another engine.

“Wait, why would this boat have two engines?” asked Amber, frowning.

Bulbasaur moved forward and laid a paw on the console, closing her eyes a moment, then turned back to her companions. “I think they were retrofitting the boat. I’m reading construction memories on these from a few days ago, and then some testing from yesterday.”

Amber nodded, then continued looking around the room. Her eye caught on a mirror above a cot, and she froze, looking at herself, then blinked as if to clear away something stuck in her eye.

“What is it, Amber?” asked Bulbasaur.

“I…” Amber shook herself. “That’s… not what I expected.” Seeing her companions’ curious looks, she elaborated. “I remember looking… well, not like this. My hair was just black, and my eyes weren’t blue like this.” Even as she said this, she scrunched her eyes closed, two lives’ worth of memories warring in her head, the dissonance in her thoughts growing into pain quickly as the odd sensation that Bulbasaur attributed to Trick Room (accompanied by the sound of howling winds and crashing waves) pressed in on the cabin, forcing her two lives to settle out quickly or not at all.

Bulbasaur frowned, feeling psychic pressure from the turmoil in Amber’s head. “Amber, what’s happening?”

Amber fell back against the wall, hands pressed to her eyes, as her staff clattered to the floor. “I-don’t-know!” she ground out through gritted teeth. “My head feels-”

And like a solar eclipse-gradually in retrospect, but in the moment, immediate-the pain in her head vanished, and reality settled out into a stable pattern.

Amber slowly lowered her hands. “Everything’s… well, not okay, but better.” She frowned, a thought nagging at the back of her mind, then spoke up to not be drowned out by the wind and waves. “I’m still having trouble remembering things, but it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

Bulbasaur sighed, relieved. “Good. I was starting to feel it there.”

“There’s something else, though…” Amber trailed off, thinking. “Something I was supposed to know about us. All that’s coming up is the Greek alphabet, for some reason.”

Bulbasaur cocked her head. “Alpha, beta, gamma? Why would that come up?”

Amber shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine, in this case.”

“That sounds-” Charmander’s words were lost in the roar of the surf as a massive wave slammed the (poorly-secured, in hindsight-they hadn’t even locked it) door open and shoved the four of them against the front of the cabin.

As the wave receded out the door, Squirtle was sent slamming into the wheel. It listed forward, groaning, but held more or less intact.

Amber pushed herself up to her hands and knee, then dragged herself up a wall to be more or less upright, then looked around, taking in the state of disarray that the cabin was in. After seeing that the Pokémon were back on their feet, she focused on finding her staff, and a moment later, she called it to her hand.

“Everyone okay?” she asked, pushing herself off the wall and taking notice of how the boat was rocking significantly underneath her all of a sudden.

“We’re fi-” Another wave swept in to interrupt Bulbasaur’s response, and this time when Squirtle slammed into the wheel, the bolts couldn’t hold up, and it slammed into the floor, then started sliding around on the layer of water.

“I’m beginning to think that leaving today was a bad idea!” called Amber, who had managed to avoid falling this time by bracing her staff against one wall and her back against another.

“I’m starting to agree!” shouted Bulbasaur, who had picked herself up psionically.

Squirtle closed her eyes, concentrating and glowing with an inner blue-green light matching the color of a normal Squirtle, and then with a flowing gesture towards the door sent what water was still on the floor surging out of the cabin, aided by the boat rocking backwards.

She dropped to one knee, exhausted, and Amber clomped over to the door and secured it, then hooked her staff in the wheel and dragged it over to block the door closed with main strength.

Then, she jolted as the boat rocked forwards, tilting far enough to send the wheel slipping on the still-slick floor, dragging the bottom of her staff off the floor and forcing her to brace against the door. As the boat dropped back down, the wheel slid off to the side, and Amber shoved off the wall, intercepting the ersatz projectile and diverting it to the side instead of squishing Bulbasaur against the wall.

As it started to slide away again, Amber grasped it in both hands and wrestled it into a mostly-upright position.

“Someone open the door!” she shouted, struggling to her feet and glowing with a blue aura as she brought her will to bear on the situation.

Charmander, floating and mostly insubstantial, pulled the door open, letting Amber heft the useless chunk of metal and electronics out of the cabin and wedge it under a bench, tied to said bench tightly enough to overcome the surf-slicked surface’s lack of friction.

As Amber turned and walked back to the cabin, but something caught her eye, and she looked past the prow for a moment.

“Well then.” She continued inside, but didn’t close the door yet. “Hey, so there’s a landmass getting closer a lot faster than we’re moving.”

“What?” asked three Pokémon at once. Looking out the window distracted them from the point they were about to raise, but Bulbasaur was more than capable of mental multitasking.

“Amber, you’re walking unaided.”

“Wait, what?” She looked down just in time to see her bad leg encased in a blue glow, before it winked out and she fell sideways against the door frame, which she would eventually characterize as an impact that “rang her bell”.

After that, things got a little fuzzy for Amber.

She remembered bits and pieces of massive waves, then a lurch that  _ probably _ meant that they had run aground and catching Squirtle as the impact had sent her bouncing around the cabin.

She managed to get out into the light-how had the storm vanished so quickly?-and hear concerned voices before passing out.

* * *

Amber blinked her eyes open, then squinted against the light that was almost directly overhead and shining very insistently down into her eyes, almost as if it were trying to illuminate her retina for an invisible optometrist who had decided that yes, after a near-death experience was the perfect time for an eye exam.

She (quite reasonably) raised her hand to cover her eyes and groaned, which would likely have been more coherent (and more vulgar) were she not otherwise occupied trying to remember what, exactly, had happened that she felt so sore.

“Hey, everything’s okay. You came out of that wreck okay, and so did those Pokémon,” said a man somewhere nearby.

The voice startled her, but after a moment of processing, the words jogged her memory, sending recent events crashing back into her mind while also putting her at ease before she even knew she should be worried. She raised her other hand to rub at her face before a gentle (albeit firm) grip pulled it down, and she became cognizant of an IV in the crook of her elbow.

“Hey, be careful. I don’t wanna take that out before Harmony gets back from lunch and checks you out.”

“Nngh,” she grunted, lowering her arm. She used her other hand to rub at her eyes, and this time when she opened them she was more able to bear the light. “What… happened? Where am I?” she croaked through a dry throat.

“You’re in Sonata City Hospital. After that odd fast storm, you washed up on the beach near Nasca Town, and since you and that boat just kind of appeared out of nowhere, they called me in to come take care of things. After Hoopa managed to open a Hyperspace Hole into the cabin, you collapsed out of it, and the Pokémon you had insisted that you be taken care of. In fact, that Bulbasaur insisted that they be let in once you woke up. One moment.” The man, who Amber could now see was relatively dark skinned and, oddly enough, blue haired, slipped out a door next to the chair he was sitting in.

The door slammed open suddenly, and Amber started before realizing that it was just Squirtle being overenthusiastic. “Amber! You’re okay!”

“That I am, Squirtle. Thanks to our host, I think,” said Amber. “Speaking of which, thank you for caring for me. I’m Amber, and you are?”

“Oh, that’s my bad.” He bowed at the waist. “I am the Gaea Town Gym leader, Adam.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally getting to some recognizable Insurgence characters.
> 
> I’ve got in the neighborhood of 1K words of S1E4 ready, this past few weeks have been hectic, what with moving and training. I should be back on track with a chapter in reserve by my next posting.
> 
> Still looking for a new beta reader, so if you're interested go ahead and speak up!
> 
> Hope y’all enjoyed.


	4. S1E4: Honesty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or in which Amber comes clean to the Deltas.

Amber had, she thought, taken the revelation that she was rescued by the Augur of Torren (and furthermore, that she was in Torren at all) quite well. That is to say that she had only frozen up for perhaps half a second chasing a memory about him that she knew was there but was staying maddeningly out of reach, much like a laser pointer would seem to be easy to catch to an unsuspecting cat before they realized it could disappear and reappear wherever it wanted, especially atop their paws, before discarding that particular train of thought and forcibly restarting her brain.

As it turned out, he was very curious about how she had managed to understand the non-Psychic Pokémon that had been with her, and when the fact that she was psychic (and had only been so for a few hours before her recent stint with a two-day period of unconsciousness) came up, he (quite sensibly) brought up Squirtle: “Your Squirtle is a dark type, is it not?

Seeing her nod, he continued. “If that’s so, then how are you understanding them psychically? I doubt you’ve learned Miracle Eye this quickly.”

Amber frowned. “That is… a good question.” She paused, thinking for a moment. “Off the top of my head I can think of a few ideas, most of which are probably wrong, and I’ll probably only think of more as time goes on.”

Adam hummed, stroking his beard. “Well, we might be able to get Diana to drop by and take a look.” Seeing Amber’s confusion, he elaborated: “She’s a Psychic-type Gym Leader.”

At that time, a brown-haired woman trailed by a Togekiss and a Gardevoir entered the room. “Ah, good, you’re awake. I’m Harmony, hospital volunteer and Sonata City Gym Leader. How are you feeling?”

“Eh…” Amber shrugged. “Not too bad, all things considered. I assume I’ve got you to thank for that?”

Harmony nodded. “Indeed.” She walked forward, then checked a computer connected to Amber’s IV. “Well, it appears you’ve taken well to the Heal Pulse-Life Dew treatment. Your leg aside, you appear to be healthy.”

Amber looked down at the appendage in question, then sighed. “Thank you for that.”

“Now.” Amber turned to Adam, and nearly flinched back at the intensity in his eyes. “I believe that, now that you’re awake and no longer in danger of dying, we can talk about why you saw fit to crash a boat into Nasca Town.” Squirtle stepped back, building a visible sheen of aura on her now-upraised hands.

“Adam!” snapped Harmony. “She was concussed!”

At almost the same time, Amber shot back with “I didn’t exactly get to pick where I landed on the sudden magic expanding landmass!”

Adam looked at her strangely. “Sudden… magic expanding landmass?”

“I have no idea why it happened either. One moment, we were traveling in a storm and the next moment I see a growing coastline and smack my head on the door.” She shot him a glare. “So I’d thank you to not cast aspersions about my motivations when I was in the middle of fleeing from a mad scientist’s island.”

Both of the adults’ jaws dropped. So did Squirtle’s hands, as she read their auras and saw the aggression fade.

“What.” Adam closed his mouth, but still looked at Amber blankly.

“Did that not come up when you discussed things with Bulbasaur?” asked Amber.

* * *

After learning what, exactly, the three Deltas and Amber had escaped from, the two Gym Leaders left the room to, as Amber guessed, fact-check (and then process the implications of) their story.

“Amber, there’s something we discussed when you were out that I think you should hear,” said Bulbasaur.

“What is it?” she asked.

“Well, with what you said about your hair and how you’ve been acting, I think- and both Charmander and Squirtle agree with me- that you’re not the same Amber we knew.” Bulbasaur looked up at the woman in question with both apprehension and determination in her eyes.

Amber’s face was inscrutable, even as she nodded. “I’m not the Amber you knew, not entirely.”

“Not entirely?” asked Charmander.

Amber shook her head, with an oddly sad smile on her face. “Nah, there’s… I guess the best way to put it would be, uh, two lives’ worth of memories in my head. One was Amber’s, and one was… well, it was from a world without Pokémon.”

The three Pokémon were gobsmacked, jaws opened as if to invite flies to enter.

Squirtle, oddly enough, was the first to recover from the shock, and she jabbed both of her companions in the side hard enough to jolt them back to the situation at hand.

“Right.” Charmander shook herself in a not-quite-catlike manner. “Well, you still saved our lives, so you can’t be all bad!”

Bulbasaur, on the other hand, was less immediately sanguine. The four-legged Psychic-type sat silently for a moment, then looked up at Amber. “Tell us more. What was your other life like?”

“Well, first I gotta preface this with the disclaimer that I… ach, how do words.” After a moment of thought, Amber continued. “I’m having memory issues. Like, I remember most things, but I know there are big gaps that I know should have something in them. Like, I’m having trouble remember what I used for my big English project.”

“Wait, what?” asked Bulbasaur, confused.

“Sorry, got off topic. Yeah, I was…” Amber paused, considering how to word this best. “I was a student, and I just about finished up my first year of study before everything went to shit.” After pausing for dramatic effect, she continued. “The president of the country had ignored an epidemic long enough for it to get to a massive crisis and then some. You… well, I think you can guess how I died.”

“Wait, you died?” asked Squirtle, awestruck at the idea of working with a reincarnate.

“It wasn’t fun,” Amber drawled. “Trust me on that.”

* * *

After another twenty minutes of discussion, the four lab escapees came to an understanding of sorts-while Amber wasn’t the same person that the three Deltas had known, they had no issue remaining aligned with her.

With that particular issue resolved, Amber was left with a significant amount of nervous energy and no way to express that energy besides a bouncy left leg and a tapping set of hands.

At least, until the sudden entry of a Hoopa into the room made her start.

“Oh, so you’re the secret that Hoopa’s not supposed to know! Hoopa doesn’t get all the hoopla about you! What’s so special about you?” the diminutive Psychic-type asked, darting around Amber much like a hummingbird.

After a moment of thought, Amber shrugged, one corner of her mouth tugging up into a smirk. “I dunno, maybe I have too many names?”

“Is- is this for real?” asked Bulbasaur, who was approaching overwhelmed thanks to all the revelations she had experienced recently.

“Hmm… That’s boring! Hoopa doesn’t know why that secret is so important!”

Amber shrugged. “I’m not exactly the paragon of secrecy and deceit. Most things about me aren’t that secret.”

Bulbasaur side-eyed her at this, but didn’t bring up the matter of reincarnation, at least partially because of Hoopa’s presence.

Hoopa evidently didn’t notice the interaction between Bulbasaur and Amber, because the hovering imp was inspecting Charmander closely. “What’s wrong with your flame? It’s all purple! Before the little Dragon could respond, Hoopa had darted off to hover over Bulbasaur and poke at the tiny nub of crystal poking out of her bulb. “And your bulb is super weird! It smells like a Sableye!”

Bulbasaur released a quick burst of telekinesis that nudged the little genie back. “Please don’t touch.”

Hoopa did a loop, then approached Squirtle. “You look like a Fighting type!”

“I am,” replied the Tiny Turtle Pokémon.

“Huh. Neat!” Hoopa did a little ascending twirl, then swept back along the three Deltas, bopping each of them on the nose before rising to hover in front of Amber. “Are you sure you don’t want to tell Hoopa what’s so interesting about you?

Amber shrugged, still smirking. “I’m not sure what else you’d need to know, you little rascal.

“Hmmm… Okay! Hoopa will find out and then Hoopa will let you know when Hoopa does!” With these parting words, Hoopa tossed out a ring and travelled through it, leaving it to shrink into nothingness with a cheery “Ping!”

“What just happened?” asked Bulbasaur.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s that.
> 
> I don’t actually have S1E5 written yet, I was discussing something really out of left field with someone in a Discord server and my muse took that and ran. I’ll probably drop that in the next few days, but I also might be a little slow with S1E5 since my muse got kidnapped and also I have two (2) lab reports due next week.
> 
> Still looking for a beta, if anyone’s interested.
> 
> Read and Review please!


	5. S1E5: Gravity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Or in which Amber begins her training.

About ten minutes after the Hoopa had left, Adam came back in, immediately followed by Harmony. “Well. I’m not so sure about this, but Adam says you need to stay somewhere, so he’s volunteered,” said Harmony.

Amber raised her eyebrows. “That’s incredibly generous of you. May I ask why?”

“Enough rope. That, and the fact that just because I’m a Dark-type trainer doesn’t make me evil. I am a Gym Leader, after all.”

Amber looked at all three of the Deltas, gauging their reactions. Squirtle nodded slowly, still watching Adam, while Charmander was much more effusive in her approval. Bulbasaur was the last to respond to Amber’s nonverbal question, scrutinizing Adam with a careful eye before nodding herself. “In that case, we’d love to take you up on your offer.”

“Alright, in that case I’ll go with Hoopa to dust off my spare room back in Gaea Town and be back within a few hours.” The man retreated from the room. “Until then,” he said, swinging the door closed behind him and Harmony as they left.

Adam, Dark-type Gym Leader and Hoopa’s trainer. Why did that ring bells for Amber? For that matter, how had she known he was Augur of Torren? There was something very off about the whole affair, but when she tried to remember, she couldn’t quite reach the memories she knew she had, ones that would explain a great deal,

“Amber? Are you okay?” asked Squirtle, frowning. “You’ve been like that for twenty minutes.”

Amber shook herself, then sighed. “Yeah, yeah. ‘M fine, just… thinking.”

“Always a dangerous thing, that,” smirked Bulbasaur.

Amber huffed out a laugh out her nose. “No argument here, Bulbasaur. No argument here.”

* * *

The next week saw Amber and the deltas settling into Adam’s quarters in the gym and also the Torren region.

Harmony had been over a few times to see how Amber was coming along, but other than bafflement as to why her body had healed from the injuries stemming from the arrival in Torren while her leg remained twisted, she hadn’t interacted with Amber much.

Besides Adam, his Pokémon, and the Deltas, Amber didn’t have much interpersonal interaction, nor much of anything to do.

That was, until today.

Amber looked up sharply at a knocking at the door, already on edge. “Amber? It’s Adam. There’s someone I invited over that you should meet. I’ll be out front, talking with her.”

The woman in question looked over at Bulbasaur, who shrugged. Then, she went to the door, Deltas trooping after her like Ducklett following their parent.

In the front room stood a brown-haired woman in a black crop top with six Poké Balls at her belt, with pink-and-gold ducklike Pokémon behind her, engaged in conversation with Adam. The Pokémon was the first to notice Amber, but Adam and the woman he was talking with turned to her shortly after.

“Ah, Amber. This is Diana, she’s the Selene City Gym Leader, and one of her two specialties is the Psychic type. Diana, this is Amber. She’s the Psychic I mentioned.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Amber. This is Cresselia,” Diana said, gesturing to the pure Psychic-type, dream-bringing Legendary hovering behind her.

Amber raised an eyebrow, internally noting how she really had to figure out why she kept having these flashes of insight.

“Nice to meet you too. These are Bulbasaur, Charmander, and Squirtle.”

“I’ve heard you have some degree of psychic potential. Is that so?” Seeing the younger woman’s nod, Diana continued. “I have some experience helping train Psychic talents, and I’d be willing to help you.”

“Just me? Or can Bulbasaur and Charmander get in on the training too?” asked Amber.

Diana frowned, confused. “But… Bulbasaur and Charmander aren’t Psychic types.”

“Normally, no. But there’s a bit of an exception in this case. Bulbasaur’s Psychic/Fairy and Charmander’s Ghost/Dragon, and Ghost and Psychic are pretty similar in terms of application, from what these two tell me.”

“The hatchling has a point,” said Cresselia, under her breath.

“Thanks for agreeing,” replied Amber, just as surreptitiously.

“Wait, what? You can understand Pokémon?” Both Diana and Cresselia were shocked, although Amber was more able to notice the former’s surprise over the latter’s.

“No, I’m just really good at guessing,” deadpanned Amber. “Yeah, I can understand Pokémon.”

“That’s… well, that’s a sign of a very strong Psychic talent. I only have minor empathy and a little bit of telekinesis, but I think I can still help you and Bulbasaur train,” said Diana. “Plus I’ve got some Ghost types that can help your Charmander. What do you think about that?”

“I think,” said Amber, slowly, “that I would be Very Much On Board with that.”

“How the hell did you capitalize spoken words?!?” Adam was confused.

“A magician never reveals her secrets. Either that or the Author did it for me, you decide.”

* * *

Diana led Amber out into one of the side training rooms in the Gym, Bulbasaur trooping after them. Once the door irised closed after them, Diana spoke. “Alright, so tell me how far you’ve gotten so far in terms of Psychic power.”

“Uhh, besides the whole ‘understanding Pokémon’ bit? I’ve got a little bit of telekinesis. Oh, and also in extremis I managed to support my own weight on my bad leg.” Amber was tapping her thumb against her staff nervously.

Bulbasaur piped up, pushing out the thought of the words she meant into the minds of the room’s occupants.  _ I’ve managed psychometry, thought-speech, and fine-scale telekinesis, so far. _

“Alright. In that case… How about Bulbasaur, you work with Cresselia a little bit while Gardevoir and I help Amber with her telekinesis?” Seeing the three other beings in the room nod, Diana took a Poké Ball from her belt and opened it, releasing a Gardevoir. “Alright, Amber, why don’t you try and demonstrate telekinesis by picking this-” here, she put a small metal cube on the floor. “-up to about waist level.”

“Will do.” Amber put out one hand, widening her stance slightly and angling her staff to balance, then focused.

The block spun wildly off the floor, bucking Amber’s grip and shooting off, and only a timely deflection from Gardevoir prevented her trainer from a black eye.

“Okay, I think I know what caused that.” Diana took the block from Gardevoir’s mental grip. “You’re mapping too much onto your physical body.”

“Wait, what?”

“You’re focusing too much on treating it like another arm, that since you’re not operating on the same physical scale as your telekinetic talent trying to use it like your own body is going to have all kinds of unbalanced forces and send it all out of wack,” explained Diana.

“Yeah, that makes sense. So how do I use telekinesis instead of using my body as a model for how it’ll work?”

Diana frowned, clearly trying to figure out how to word things. Fortunately, she wasn’t the only one with experience with telekinesis helping Amber.

“You have to visualize what you want to happen. If you want to exert a force on something, imagine pushing on the object. If you want an object to move, see it moving in your mind. If you want to treat down as up and up as down, visualize that,” said Gardevoir.

“Hmmm…” Amber closed her eyes, then focused on warping the fabric of reality. Gradually, she felt something tugging her forwards.

“Gravity differentials? Interesting. I’ve always been told that that’s one of the most complicated ideas to visualize. Well, for Pokémon that aren’t naturally connected to gravity, like Gardevoir here,” said Diana.

“That’s… not like Psychic gravity, it feels like I’m standing on an incline,” frowned Gardevoir. “How did you do that?”

Amber let her focus lapse, leaning against her staff. “Well, I figured that that gravity is mostly just curved space-time, and I can already visualize that. So I just put another curve into the fabric of space-time and decided that actually existed.”

“Wait, you’re using the spacetime folding method? Most of the time we just borrow a trick from the Ghost type and cut ourselves off from gravity to inflict it on others.” Gardevoir frowned, trying to understand how Amber was manipulating gravity so well.

“Well, that but also ‘Screw Gravity’ and-” she quoted, just before she started floating up, then wriggled around in a manner that she would later describe as “super embarrassing”. “-the enemy’s gate is down,” she finished, landing hard on the ceiling and almost falling before she could get her staff in position to properly counterbalance her weight.

“What. The. Fuck.”

“It’s… just about exactly what it looks like. Up is down is up,” she said, pushing off the ceiling into a spin that led to her nearly faceplanting if not for landing braced on her forearms, albeit slower than would ordinarily be expected.

Amber pushed off the floor hard, rising to an upright position and settling back to the ground gently. Then, seeing how everyone was staring at her in wide-eyed wonderment, blinked. “Was it something I said?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, that was a thing.
> 
> Honestly, I didn’t come into this expecting to walk out with Amber being a great gravimancer, but hey, if it works it works.
> 
> Uploads might get pushed back, two lab classes at once aren’t exactly great for free time.
> 
> Still looking for a new beta.
> 
> Say hi on tumblr: @lucifra-writes
> 
> Have a nice day.


	6. S1E6: The End of the Beginning

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Where normalcy is shattered, for good.

Over the next few months, Amber managed to greatly increase her aptitude with gravitational control, to the point where she no longer technically needed the staff since she could just airwalk (what she had read somewhere as a description of walking but a few inches above the ground.

Eventually, Adam caved. “So, kiddo, why do you keep using the staff?”

“Besides the whole ‘speak softly and carry a big stick’ thing?” Seeing Adam’s confusion, she waved him off. “It’s a thing back home. Anyways, it’s to get people to underestimate me, as well as the whole ‘don’t trip and break my arm again’ bit, with a dash of comfort object.” She snorted. “Glad I figured out Recover after that particular spill.”

She was referring to an incident that had occurred last week, where she had tried walking under lowered gravity without the staff. It had worked well-she had been slowly building up the strength in her bad leg, so instead of purely unresponsive, it was just extremely weak.

Of course, the downside of that approach was that it required constant focus, which became abundantly obvious when Squirtle had startled her, sending her pitching forward. By instinct, she put out one hand to stop her fall.

She remembered her mistake too late, when her arm broke.

Fortunately, she had already been trying to work on Recover at the time, and the unscheduled practice she had gotten was just the thing she needed to get it working.

Adam nodded, the flash of motion dragging her back to the present. “Understandable, kid. Just so long as you make sure that you can get around.”

“No worries on that front,” she drawled. “Hey, you mind if I sit in on your training with Squirtle today?”

“Sure thing, kid. I mean, once you end up on your journey with Squirtle, you’ll be taking over her training anyways, so you should probably be an active part going forwards.”

“Fair enough.” Amber flicked her wrist, a focused eddy of gravity sending Squirtle’s Poké Ball spinning forward to release the diminutive Dark-type.

“Before we start, I have one question for you, Amber.”

“Shoot,” replied the blue-haired Psychic, settling down to watch Adam’s training.

“Why do you not use telekinesis?” Seeing Amber’s frown, he continued hastily. “I’m not accusing you of anything. I’m just curious, since you use gravimancy for most things.”

“Oh, that.” Amber relaxed. “Uh, honestly? I’m still having a weird mapping issue with that. Like, every time I try to use telekinesis, I’m using the model of a hand to base the forces off of, but that just leads to super unbalanced forces because of the difference between bone and muscle and psionic power. I’ll figure it out eventually, but for now it’s just easier and more efficient to use gravity.”

Adam nodded, satisfied. “So long as you’re still working on it.”

“Oh, she is. Trust me,” said Squirtle, pushing enough Aura into the words that Adam could understand them.

“Alright then. Since Amber’s sitting in for the first time, this is going to be a more theory-forward lesson. So, Squirtle, remind us what the base nature of the Dark type is.”

“It’s the concept of underhanded tactics, right?” asked the diminutive turtle.

“Nnnot entirely. It’s more than just that. It’s more like using every resource at your disposal-and even some that aren’t at  _ your _ disposal-to win,” he corrected.

“Oh, like Foul Play and Power Trip?” asked Amber.

Adam made a finger gun at her. “That’s the right idea. There’s also things like Punishment, Fling, and Throat Chop. Basically, the Dark type is based around fighting unfair.”

“If you’re fighting fair, you’re doing it wrong,” Amber quoted, as if by rote. Then, she frowned. She really needed to understand where this weird knowledge ex nihilo was coming from.

“That’s… actually an excellent line. I might steal that. Anyways, the Dark type is more a mindset than a fighting style. You have to be willing to throw away a lot of the normal rules of combat in order to properly use most of these moves. There are a few that that doesn’t apply to, like Night Slash or Bite, but on the whole you have to psych yourself into the proper way of thinking. Some people can do this well enough to no-sell Psychic mind powers, but not the other effects, not the way a good Dark-type Pokémon could do it, but that’s mostly because it’s not just a passing mindset but part of what they are, so they’re really good at squirming out of telekinetic attacks.”

“Hmm.” Amber frowned. “Alright, I’ll have to keep an eye on that.”

* * *

A few weeks later, Amber had finally managed to convince Adam to let her out on the town. “I may be an introvert,” she had said, “but even I need to get out and stretch my legs.”

“Well… as long as you hold on to your Rotomphone and keep the three Deltas, you should be okay.” And so, having agreed to Adam’s conditions, Amber had been left to wander Gaea Town, her Pokémon trooping after her like ducklings.

“What’s a duckling?” asked Bulbasaur, confused at the thought that had flitted through Amber’s mind.

“It’s, like…” Amber frowned, trying to remember a line she had heard at some point. “Ah, right. It’s like a boring Ducklett that can’t talk.”

“Hmm.” Bulbasaur frowned, then continued. “So what are we doing today out in the city?”

“Honestly?” Amber shrugged, spinning a circle while walking to face all three Deltas for a moment, then returning to facing forward. “No idea. I just figured we could walk around the town, see what’s what.”

“That’s… shouldn’t we have asked for advice from Adam about what’s going on in town?” asked Squirtle.

“You know, that probably would have been a good idea.” Amber continued walking. “I’ll get advice next time.”

After another few minutes of walking through the town, they came across a man sitting on a bench holding a sign:

**I am the Human Calculator, smartest human alive.**

**Test my skill!**

“This looks interesting,” said Amber. Seating herself opposite the man, cracking her knuckles. “Test your skill how?”

“I can perform any calculation you might want me to,” came the answer.

“Hmmmmm…” Amber frowned. “Alright then. What happens when x=1 for the derivative of the arc-cosecant of x plus the natural log of x?”

“What are you saying?” asked Charmander, confused.

“It’s a math thing. I’m asking about the slope of a function, essentially.”   
  


**Error: Divide by zero.**

**Rebooting…**

Amber flinched as reality flickered around her and the message plastered to her eyeballs vanished. “What the hell?”

“Ah, nice try, kid!” said the Human Calculator. “You tricked me into dividing by zero. Clever, hiding it inside a derivative.”

“Is… is that what happened?”

“Yup. Good going, but that kind of thing is against the spirit of the competition. Have a nice day!” The edges of his outline flickered, as if in an old computer glitch, and then he vanished.

Amber frowned. She knew that had to be relevant somehow, but how it was exactly was locked behind the same wall that hid why she understood so much about the world.

“Hey, Amber?” After Amber turned to her, Bulbasaur continued. “Why haven’t you tried to use Recover to try and get back your memories?”

After a moment of thought, Amber replied: “Well, I’m not actually sure if I can. I’m still figuring out what it does, and I’m not willing to use it that way yet just in case it breaks something else.”

“That’s probably fair.”

After another moment of rest, Amber pushed herself back to her feet, then nodded. “A little bit more, then I think we should head back to the gym. Any objections?” Seeing the three Deltas shake their heads, Amber clomped off.

Making her way around town, Amber stopped a moment at the outdoor market near Route 17, looking at the Plates being sold with an appraising eye, but then moving on.

On the way back to the Gym, Amber frowned. There was an odd feeling tickling the back of her neck, and she could hear the crackling of fire behind her.

Wait. Fire?

She whirled, seeing a white-haired woman flanked by a Spiritomb flashing oddly at her and also a Houndoom, building a Fire Blast in its mouth. Behind her was another man, but Amber was too busy slamming a wedge of psionic force into the Fire Blast, splitting it to miss both her and the Deltas.

She may not have been great with fine applications of telekinesis, but she could manage larger effects.

“What the fuck are you doing?” she snapped out, even as she prepared for combat.

“Nothing personal, kid,” the woman replied. “We just need you to get to Adam.”

Amber’s mind surged into overtime even as she slammed gravity forwards, sending the man and the woman flying backwards.

Unfortunately, the Spiritomb and Houndoom weren’t effected, and the flashing lights suddenly made sense to Amber as she succumbed to the Hypnosis.

Her last thoughts were  _ Well, fuck. _

* * *

She came to being held by a Hydreigon, looking straight at Adam.

“As you can see, she’s very much alive. For now. Will you endanger her for your own continued freedom, or will you hand over the crystal to us?” asked the woman, hand extended.

Amber cursed herself for not spending more time on non-Psychic moves-she had known that being connected to the Augur painted a target on her back for the cults, and she had read enough about the Darkrai cult to know that they were a threat.

A snippet of a thought ran through her head as she hung there, suspended in the Dark/Dragon’s arms- “a horrible aura imbued with dark thoughts”.

Collecting her rage, fear, and spite in one hand much like she would a ball of force, she slammed it back into the levitating Dragon, making it flinch back and drop her, where she landed gently thanks to her gravimancy since her staff was missing.

The Deltas and their Pokéballs weren’t at her belt, but she still turned, slamming two punches into the Dark/Dragon and then leaping into a spinning variant of High Jump Kick thanks to gravimancy.

While she was facing that way, she saw Adam’s Greninja, flinging Water Shurikens at an Arcanine, and then continued turning, spiking the gravity to fall much faster onto the Hydreigon.

She landed awkwardly, having to cut the gravity hastily to not collapse again, which let the Hydreigon recover enough to lash out at her, slamming her back into the wall.

“Enough!” snapped a male voice, halting the Hydreigon as it loomed forwards.

“Adam, this is enough. Hand over the crystal and she doesn’t have to get hurt.” The man extended his hand.

“Why, Jaern? Why are you doing this?”

“For the betterment of the region.” The man that Amber now recognized as one of East’s friends sighed. “Look, Adam. I respect you immensely, but you’re just not doing enough for the region. Just give me the crystal and no one else has to get hurt.”

“Do you swear?”

“You have my word.”

Adam slumped, but pulled a deep green crystal out of his back pocket and offered it to Jaern.

“Fuck you!” snapped Amber, yanking the crystal over to her before it could fall into Jaern’s hands.

“Dark Pulse!” called a female voice, and the Hydreigon obliged, launching a wave of black malevolence at Amber.

The last thoughts in her head this time were  _ Not again. _

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yay cliffhanger-ish!
> 
> So for the math thing, the derivative of arc-cosecant ends up as |x|^(-1)*(x^2-1)^-½, which ends up with 1/0. I don’t plan to give her Missingno now, I just needed something for them to do in town real quick and this worked.
> 
> I know it might look like it, S1 isn’t over. I’m planning to go at least until the Trainer’s School bit before ending S1. The title is because we’re finally hitting canon (that is, Insurgence Canon).
> 
> I haven’t gotten the chance to actually play insurgence, since I’m on a Mac and I got my computer after they dropped support for Wine, so I’ll be relying on let’s plays and the wiki for canon where I decide not to diverge.
> 
> As before, I’m still in the market for a Beta reader, but it’s not a huge deal.
> 
> Read and Review, please!


	7. S1E7: A Mew Hope

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Amber remembers.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the pun, but I had to.
> 
> Okay, a quick note about last chapter and more specifically Amber’s performance against the Hydreigon.
> 
> She was very lucky.
> 
> She managed to get enough of a Dark Pulse together to hit, she got the flinch, and she also landed the High Jump Kick.
> 
> In relative levels, she’s about Lv. 20, it was mid-70s.
> 
> She dealt negligible damage to it.
> 
> One more quick thing: parts of this chapter are quoted directly from the game (primarily dialogue).
> 
> With that out of the way, let’s get into the chapter.

_ Hello? Is this thing working? Can you hear me? Oh, thank Arceus. You’re not gone just yet. You’ve got to listen to me. It'll return any minute now. You need to stay focused, and remember all you can. If you value your memories at all, you’ll listen to what I have to say. We need too be quick. You at least remember your name, right? _

Amber, she thought. It’s a nice name, probably one she’d pick for herself if she hadn’t been given it at birth.

_ Okay, okay. Good, you remember your name. What else do you remember? Are you a boy or a girl? _

Sometimes, thought Amber. That felt right, on a visceral level.

_ Thank goodness. You still remember you. _

An oddly pixellated sound impinged on her mind.

_ It’s here. Amber, you need to wake up! I’ve sent someone to fend it off and get you out of here. You need to wake up! _

Amber swam back to the surface of her consciousness through the shards of shattered memories, vaguely aware of a cold presence looming above her through the pounding of her head. She blinked her gummy eyes open, seeing a too-wide grin set in a purple face.

The creature (Gengar? Why did that name feel right?) cackled, before reaching out to touch her forehead with a chill-aura-radiating hand.

“Mew!”

There was a squeak, as if that of a cat, and the purple thing flew back, surrounded in blue-white aura. The Gengar(?) seemed to become more transparent with fear, then turned and dove into the wall.

_ The Gengar’s gone… go. Follow Mew, get out of here, and never look back. Good luck. _

“Mew!” squeaked a pink, fuzzy creature (oddly catlike, noted Amber absently) that floated over and nudged her shoulder with its little pink paw.

Amber groaned, rubbing her forehead as she sat up on the slablike bed that she had been placed in but still not throwing off the blanket draped over her. “Someone get the number of the truck that ran me over?” she quipped, trying to dredge up some reason why she should be here.

“Mew!” replied the cat-thing (Mew?), holding out a note in its paw to Amber.

“Thank you, kitty,” she said, taking the note and wincing as soreness bloomed in her back as she stretched over to take the piece of paper.

_ Amber, _

_ You might not remember this, but you have been working on Recover, and you’ve been trying to tie it to a mantra. You said something about it having to be associated with healing yourself, but you never said anything more, and you also never used it to try to get your memories back. If they’re doing what I think they are, this seems like an excellent trial by fire. _

_ -A _

Amber frowned. “What kind of healing mantra could I be thinking of? There’s Waïse Heill, but that’s not self-healing. Maybe…” She frowned for a moment, then focused on the idea of being completely restored, and dredging up a memory from a work she’d read long ago (or maybe recently, her disjointed memories distorted her sense of time). “Wholeness Rightly Assumed!”

She fell backwards onto the bed, passing out as her memories returned to her in a rush.

* * *

This time, when Amber returned to consciousness, it was with a “Well, fuck.”

At least she knew why everything seemed so familiar- she was playing through Pokémon Insurgence. “I better get all three of the little ones back, author,” she grumbled, pushing herself off the bed to settle to the floor under reduced gravity, keeping the weight off her bad leg.

“Are you okay now?” asked Mew from behind Amber. “No plans to collapse?”

“No, I think I’m entirely too angry for that right now, Mew,” Amber replied absently.

“Wait, what? I didn’t think you could understand me, you didn’t before!” Mew floated in front of Amber, frowning. “What changed?”

“Hell if I know,” groused Amber, looking around the room for something to use to walk so she didn’t have to rely on her gravimancy. “When you got in here, you didn’t happen to see my staff, did you?”

Mew tilted its head. “Uhh, not that I saw, but there could be one. Stay right there, I’ll be back!” With that, the floating cat zipped out of the room, leaving Amber behind.

“Got it,” said Amber, clenching her jaw and stoking the flame of rage in her chest until she could breathe again. Then, she focused, cutting down on gravity until her bad leg could bear her weight, and proceeded to leave the room, looking around for something to write with.

She found a pen and a sheet of scrap paper, then proceeded to scrawl a note on it.

_ Persephone, _

_ I thought you knew what it was like getting left to a cult’s tender mercies. Why wish that on someone else? _

_ Ainsel. _

Leaving the note on the bed, she continued out the door, then started when Mew reappeared, clutching Amber’s staff. “I’m back, with a staff thingie! It was in a closet.”

Amber blinked, dumbstruck, then took the staff, resting on it and allowing her hold over gravity to relax. “Thanks, Mew.”

“No problem!”

The duo continued on through the corridors, reading a few snippets from books and picking up medicines that Amber promptly put in a bag she found, then proceeding up a flight of stairs that opened into either another set of stairs or a door. When Amber tried the door, the biometric lock stymied her, so they proceeded to a second flight, Mew tapped Amber’s shoulder, offering a note to the trainer.

_ I chose Mew to help you out of this mess due to its special ability. It is able to use Transform to change its form and disguise itself as something else. However, unlike Ditto, Mew can transform you as well. If you can find DNA, Mew can disguise you as someone else. You should be able to use this to escape. _

“Huh. Thanks, Mew.”

“You’re welcome!” chirped the feline, hovering after Amber after she climbed the stairs.

Mew immediately pinched their nose upon reaching the top floor of the base. “Yuck! That green goop stinks!”

Amber was more distracted by a pair of Darkrai statues on a higher level, climbing the stairs to get a better view. “Hey, Mew?” she called to where the psychic cat was making faces at the moat of green goop around the edges of the lower room. “I think I found some DNA.”

The diminutive Psychic-type teleported to Amber, then hovered closer to the ground, sniffing at the blood in the circular glyph on the floor. “Yup, that’ll work. Want me to shift you now?”

“Sure, why not.”

With a squeak, the world twisted, and when Amber could see again, she was looking out through a white-and-red hood, and while the staff was gone, she could put weight on her bad leg thanks to Mew’s psionic support.

She stepped forward, thrown off her balance for a moment by the differing proportions of this body, then turned and hurried down the stairs.

This time, the biometric scanner let Amber through.

The rooms on this floor yielded a Repel, an Ice Heal, an awakening, and another two Potions, then she proceeded to climb yet another set of stairs.

She felt more than heard Mew’s groan at the stench of the green sludge, and privately agreed, However, she persevered and managed to catch the ritual.

“And so we begin…” said a black-clad, white-haired woman (that Amber’s knowledge of the Insurgence game allowed her to identify as Persephone), standing on another elevated platform with two Darkrai statues on either side, facing another cultist in the center of the green-glowing ritual circle on the floor.

“Miss! Please, you can’t do this! I don’t want to die!” blubbered the cultist, cringing away from her.

“You swore when you joined that you would give your life for us. How is this any different?” Ignoring the figure cowering before her, she called over her shoulder, “Activate the ritual circle!”

The green light of the circle blazed red.

“Darkrai, Lord of Darkness! I call upon you to enter our world! In return, I offer you the soul of this loyal servant, to be bound to your world of nightmare forevermore! _ Voco virtutem umbrarum dominum _ !”

And the room went black.

A rasping noise and wave of despair heralded the return of the light, with the lighting taking on a red cast. In the place of the cultist-turned-sacrifice floated Darkrai, facing Persephone.

“Darkrai, the lord of nightmares… You are the Great Balancer of the world. You punish the great, and slay the immortal. It has been a week since I saw you last. You remember what occurred then? We accomplished something incredible that day.”

“Not so incredible as to be permanent. Little legend, be safe, for the Augur’s sake,” rasped Darkrai, and Amber knew they were referring to her.

Ignorant of Darkrai’s comment and Amber’s answering nod, Persephone continued. “I thought, finally, you had accepted our offer to join us. But you fled soon after, necessitating another summoning. As such, now I call upon you again… Darkrai, why will you not join me?”

Interrupting once again, Darkrai spoke: “Because you acknowledge not the hypocrisy of what I was forced to do. You, a victim of the cults, asked me to seal away an Arceus-chosen in the mind of an Author-touched and imprison them here for you.”

Once again, only Amber heard this, and her mind kicked into overdrive.

“I know my sister has seen you time and time again… Why do you favor her over me?” She paused for breath, maintaining eye contact with the Dark-type. “I beseech you, Darkrai, join me. Join the cult that has worshipped you for so long. With my guidance and your power, the world could be ours!”

“Power has purpose, foolish child. And you understand not mine.” Darkrai vanished, leaving only those words behind, for an audience of one human and one Pokémon.

Persephone seethed in silence for a moment, then spoke. “Well isn’t that just  _ lovely _ . It’s probably gone off to Selene City to see my sister again… What a waste of a grunt.”

As she descended the stairs, two cultists moved to stand in front of her.

“And what,” she hissed, “do you two want, exactly?”

“Miss, please. I’m confident that if we had another try, we could trap Darkrai here! We don’t know why it didn’t work this time, but if you’ll just give us another chance…”

“Out. Of. My. Way.” She didn’t bother waiting for them to move, releasing her Houndoom and snapping off a curt “Fire Blast.”

The two cultists slammed into the wall, then fell to their knees, burned but ultimately alive.

“I’m going to go check on the prisoner. None of you had better follow me.” She stalked off down the stairs, and the mounting tension in the room dissipated as the burned cultists were dragged away.

Amber wasted no time in leaving, barely grabbing the Burn Heal (with a muttered “You better have Burn Heal!”) in the side room.

Emerging into the forest, Mew allowed the change in their shape to vanish, with Amber’s clothes returning to the Hive Mind shirt, plain pants, and deep blue hoodie she had on before. Silently giving thanks for both the return of her staff and that somehow her clothes hadn’t begun to stink, she tromped down the stairs and out into the forest, following the path out of the forest.

Upon emerging into Telnor Town, Mew tapped Amber’s shoulder again, offering another note and a small flute.

Bemused, Amber took them both with a “Where are you keeping these? You don’t even have pockets!”

_ This flute lets you call upon Mew when needed. To use it, register it to the Y button, or just play it. Good luck. _

_ -Your Benefactor. _

“What, three meta jokes in one chapter? What, are we trying to get to an average of one per chapter?” muttered Amber, slipping both the note and the flute into her bag.

“Alright, Amber! Good luck, see you later!” squeaked Mew, rising into the air.

“Was that Mew? I could swear I saw it here, just now!” Amber turned, coming face-to-face with the white-haired youth her meta-knowledge told her was Damian.

“Did you see it? A tiny pink Pokémon? It was floating really close to you!”

“Uhh… yeah. Yeah, I did.” Seeing his face light up, Amber hurried out her next words: “But don’t tell anyone! Mew doesn’t really like people, so it wants to keep its secret.”

“I promise!” he said, crossing his heart.

“Thanks, kiddo,” said Amber, ruffling his hair.

“I’m not a kid, I’m thirteen!” he shot back, pouting.

“If you say so.” From the combined ages of both Amber’s other-world life and that as Mr. Fuji’s daughter, she was easily into her twenties, but she decided to lay off with the “kid” talk. “Anyways, I’m Amber,” she said, offering her hand to shake.

“My name is Damian,” he said, shaking her hand and confirming her meta-knowledge. “I’m an aspiring Pokémon Trainer! You came to Telnor Town at the perfect time! The Augur– the greatest man in the world, of course– is coming today! You know who the Augur is, right?”   
Amber schooled her features into neutrality, hiding her reaction to the outburst and the man it was centered around. “Yeah, I do. The Protector of Torren.”

“Yeah, that’s the guy! Anyways, the mayor and the townsfolk have been preparing ever since this morning. I’m excited! I was just running errands before he gets here!” Damian turned his gaze onto Amber. “I know! Why don’t you help out? We’re assigning jobs in the Town Hall! You know, cleaning and so on.” Not taking no for an answer, he took her hand and dragged her off towards the center of town.

“Well, guess I’m helping out.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s the chapter!
> 
> I’m probably gonna be working on longer chapters going forward, since I’m now in the territory of things I can base the story off of instead of just beating the story juice out of my brain.
> 
> Still looking for a beta.
> 
> Read and review, please and thancc!


	8. S1E8: And So It Begins

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the plot begins.

Damian dragged the dimensionally-displaced Psychic to the town hall, although Amber waited against the wall when he approached his parents.

“I finished cleaning up the road, is there anything else I can do?” he asked, before snapping his fingers. “Oh, right! This is Amber. I found… them outside and they offered to help too.”

“Nice to meet you, Amber,” said Damian’s father (presumably- they shared a similar facial structure, although their hair and eyes didn’t match) said. Then, turning back to Damian, he continued: “Well, Damian, I think we’re pretty well finished. As long as you have your gift for the Augur ready, I think you’re done.”

Damian blanched. “Oh. Well… um… I may have… forgotten.”

“Of course you have,” sighed the woman on the other side of Damian’s father.

“You’d better find one, and fast. I heard you could find a Rare Stone in one of the caves in the forest. Of course, you’d need a Pokémon to go safely…” said his father, side-eyeing his wife (at least, Amber thought- she knew she wasn’t Damian’s mother, but otherwise not much about her).

“No, absolutely not! Not a chance!” she snapped. “Damian is not  _ ready _ to get a Pokémon! He’s still just a child!”

Amber found herself seething on Damian’s behalf, even if the poor boy was more discouraged than angry. “Please? Everyone else in the town already got theirs and left on their journey!”

“And you’re not going to follow them! You’ll get yourself killed!”

“Why do you care? It’s not like you’re my real mother or anything…” Damian slumped.

“I raised you since birth! You’re not capable of raising a plant, let alone a Pokémon! You’re irresponsible, antisocial, and you can’t even-” she began.

“Grass-type Pokémon exist,” muttered Amber sotto voce.

“That’s enough. You two are causing a scene.” Damian’s father didn’t raise his voice, but both of them took heed nonetheless. “You said your name was Amber, yes?” Seeing her nod, he continued. “I’m sure you’ve handled a Pokémon before.”

“As a matter of fact I have,” Amber replied.

Damian’s father nodded. “Good. We’ll lend one to both you and Damian. Would you be willing to help him through the forest to the cave to help him find a gift for the Augur?”

Amber nodded. “Yessir.”

“Wonderful! I’m very grateful. So it’s settled, then. Amber will help Damian to get a gift for the Augur, and if Damian shows responsibility, perhaps he can keep the Pokémon afterwards. Well? How does that sound?”

“Fine. He won’t, though.” Damian’s… stepmother? Probably. She turned away, nose in the air.

“Amber, let’s go.” Damian walked out of the room with Amber following, then stopped just outside the building. “Thanks for being willing to come with me.”

“No problem, kiddo.” She patted him on the head, ignoring his grumbling. “So, where to now?”

“The Professor’s lab! She used to be an adventurer, so she has a lot of Eevee left over from her days as a trainer. Come on! It’s this way.”

As it turned out, the lab was a grey stone building on the edge of town with an abundance of windows.

When Amber and Damian entered, there was a fedora-wearing man in a black trench coat standing in front of who Amber assumed to be the Professor. They stood in between the bookshelves mostly blocking the path to the entrance, watching.

“...listen, Professor. These Pokémon… they’re freaks. No other trainer would want them, and we can’t keep them any longer. They’re very uncooperative, their ability to speak notwithstanding, and they’ve refused to obey any of the trainers we’ve tried to pair them with. All I want is for you to take them. You already keep a bunch of Eevee as is, surely these three won’t be a bother?” he finished.

The Professor frowned. “...Why do you care about them? I know what you’ve done.”

“It’s true, I’m merciless. I’ve done some awful things. But there’s no reason for these Pokémon to die, not over being gifted to the wrong man.”

“Um… Hello?” asked Damian, frowning. “I’m Damian, and this is Amber. We’re here to get a Pokémon so we can go into the forest safely. Is now a bad time?” He shrunk back a bit once Reukra’s full gaze fell onto him (or at least Amber thought it was Reukra. She wasn’t sure.).

“Sylvan, if you don’t take these Pokémon, I’ll release them, and they’re sure to die in the wild. If you want, you can just give them to these kids, right?”

The Professor sighed. “Let them out, so they can at least see what their options are.”

Reukra threw three blue-and-gray Poké Balls, and-

“Amber?” asked three Pokémon at once.

Amber sucked in a breath through her nose, then sighed, turning to Reukra even as the three Deltas swarmed her. “Looks like you ended up with stolen Pokémon. They’re my friends.”

“Is that so.” Reukra looked into her eyes, then turned away. “If you’ll excuse me, I have to go talk to the man who swore to me that they were a trade from one of his subordinates.” He turned on his heel, then stalked out, a palpable aura of malice building around him.

“Well then…” The Professor looked very awkward for a moment, then sighed. “Alright, Damian. Come out back to the Eevee paddock so we can pick one out for you.”

Curious, Amber followed the two out through a door in the side of the lab, which opened into a relatively large, fenced-in area with a significant…

“Hey, Bulbasaur, do you know what the proper term for a group of Eevee is? A herd? A pack?”

Before Bulbasaur could respond, the little foxlike Pokémon swarmed them, purring relentlessly and begging for scritches with their wide eyes and squeaky “E-vui!” noises that those of them who could understand Pokémon understood as excitement over new people.

“I think it’s a pack, but I’m not sure,” said Bulbasaur.

“Got it, thanks.”

One (rather pale) Eevee, who hadn’t swarmed around the Professor and Damian, did a double take. “Wait, did you just understand that weird pink Bulbasaur?”

Amber looked at the oddly large and poofy fluffball at her feet, then winked. “I did, but keep a lid on that, please.”

“Yeah! Yeah, definitely,” squeaked the Normal-type.

Amber turned her attention to Damian and the Professor, who were still at the epicenter of a massive swarm of Eevee. After a few minutes, the group disbanded except for one, who nuzzled against Damian’s legs.

That done, the three humans returned through the same door through which they entered, upon which time the Professor walked behind a desk and retrieved two devices, which she held out to each of the younger trainers. “These are Pokédexes, which are the primary way we collect and categorize data on Pokémon. I’d like you each to take one and use it to take records of the Pokémon you encounter along your journey.”

“But…” Damian frowned. “We’re just going to Shade Forest to get the Augur a gift!”

The Professor looked Damian dead in the eyes. “This Pokémon is yours. And I know for a fact that you’ve been wanting to go on a journey for a long time. Think of this as a… going-away present.”

“Are you sure?” asked Damian, frowning.

“Yes, Damian. I wouldn’t trust you with an Eevee if I wasn’t.”

Damian took the device with wide, shocked eyes. “Wow. Thanks, Professor. Hey, uh, Amber? I need a little time to myself. I’ll meet you in the cave to the north of town.” With that, he walked out of the room, the Eevee still following him.

The Professor turned to Amber once the door swung shut. “Are you the same Amber that Adam talked about taking in? The one who came to Torren with that weird storm?”

“If I’m not, then someone else has a remarkably similar backstory to me.”

The Professor gave Amber a level look that somehow conveyed both amusement and the fact that now was not the time. “Good. I want you to keep an eye on Damian when he goes on his journey.”

Amber nodded. “Already planned on doing that. He’s a good kid.”

“Thank you. I’m glad that there can be someone to look out for Damian when he goes out into the world besides his Pokémon.” She offered the Pokédex to Amber.

Amber patted her pockets, then pulled out her Rotomphone, which by some miracle hadn’t been stolen by the cultists. “No need, Professor. I’ve got that Galarian prototype software for this, so I don’t need one of those.”

“Still. I want to thank you for being willing to keep an eye on Damian. I mean, I’ll let you keep any Pokémon you catch that you’re not capable of taking with you at any point here, but that’s something that I end up doing to a lot of ambitious trainers in Torren.” She frowned, thinking, then started. “You know, that Eevee behind you looks pretty attached to you.”

“Wait, what?” Amber turned to see the aforementioned Normal-type behind her, at which point she frowned. “What are you doing here, little one?”

“Uhh…” The little Pokémon hesitated, seeing all five other denizens of the room look over at it. “I wanted to try and follow you around and convince you to bring me with you.”

Amber looked over at the Professor, who shrugged. “If the little one wants to go with you, I won’t hold it back.” She frowned. “I think that one’s the special one, though.”

Amber frowned, even as the three Delta Pokémon around her ankles went over to the Eevee and started having a conversation. “Special how?”

“Well…” she begun.

“Ah-choo!” Amber turned around just in time to see a giant cloud of dirt dust explode off the Eevee, and when it shook its head, several little orbs floated out of its now-black neck ruff.

“It ate an Eevite,” finished the Professor, lamely.

Amber blinked, then frowned. “Was that a shiny Mega Eevee pretending to be a regular Eevee?”

“Uhhh…” The little normal type quailed a little bit. “Sorry?”

“Ach,” huffed Amber, pressing her hand to her face and dragging it down. “It’s almost like the author is trying to make it hard for me to fly under the radar,” she grumbled.

“What was that?” asked the Professor.

“Nothing, nothing. If you’re sure?”

“You’ve got a good heart. Otherwise, that Eevee wouldn’t have been willing to follow you.”

Amber sighed. “Alright. Any objections from you three?” Seeing all three Deltas shake their heads, Amber nodded. “Alright, Eevee. Welcome to the team.”

Professor Sylvan handed Amber a blue-green Shiny Ball. “This is Eevee’s.” After Amber took it, the Professor snagged her arm. “Whatever you do, don’t trust the cults.”

Amber gave her a lopsided grin. “Trust me, Professor,” she drawled, “There’s absolutely no reason I would.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s it! Originally, I was intending to go on a little longer, and have Amber catch… well, you’ll see next episode. But I have a thing I have to prep for tonight, and after that I’m probably gonna be running the Crown Tundra.
> 
> Still looking for a beta, so if you’re interested…
> 
> Read and review, please and thancc, and have a nice day.


	9. S1E9: Shiny Luck

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which the shiny odds appear to be much less than 1 in 8192.
> 
> Some text (mostly dialogue) is directly quoted from the game.

After leaving Professor Sylvan’s lab, Amber led the four Pokémon up north, through the town and to the forest where they could discuss things in… relative privacy.

“Alright. So. What did the Deltas end up telling you?” asked Amber, lowering herself to the floor against a tree gently after making sure she wouldn’t squash the (oddly bulbous) Weedle crawling its way up said tree.

“Uhh… That you’re all a result of some weird science experiment that tried to clone Mew?” Eevee settled down onto…

“Yeah, more or less. By the way, what pronouns should I use to refer to you?” While asking this, Amber slipped her bag off her shoulder, gray-and-red fabric contrasting strongly with the grass.

“Uh, they/them, please!” Eevee said, sitting on their haunches.

“Alright, then.” Amber sighed. “Here’s the scoop: I’m Amber, she/they, and… well, the science experiment wasn’t far off, but it wasn’t the whole story.”

“What does that mean?”

“Well, it’s fairly complicated, but I’ve been reincarnated into this world.”

“And then right when she arrived, she saved our lives! They were trying to develop clones of us, Mew, and Amber, but we weren’t healthy enough, so we were dying. But then, somehow, Amber stopped dying and figured out a way to save us!” Charmander said, more excited than Amber was expecting.

Eevee blinked. “Wow. That… sure is something!”

“We’ve also gotten tangled up in cult business after getting taken in by the Augur, which happened after we escaped from the island we were cloned on,” continued Bulbasaur.

Eevee looked gobsmacked. “I… didn’t expect that.”

“Oh, it gets even weirder.” Seeing everyone’s eyes on her, Amber elaborated. “See, before I got kidnapped and mindwiped, I was having memory issues, as in there were big chunks of my life before I ended up here that I couldn’t remember. After Mew saved me, well, I figured out how to get my memories back.”

* * *

“So, let me get this straight.” Squirtle shot Amber a glare, preventing the Trainer from making any kind of joke about her word choice. “You come from a world embroiled in a global pandemic where Pokémon is a fictional story, and you’ve also been possibly chosen by Mew after being abducted by the man who is now the Augur?”

Amber nodded. “That about sums it up, yeah.”

Squirtle sighed. “Of course. Well, we were already guaranteed to have a complicated journey, this will just help us with getting through in one piece.”

The other Deltas and Eevee all made various noises of assent.

“Amber, we decided we’d be with you until the end, we’re not going to let something like this stop that,” said Bulbasaur.

Tears welled up in Amber’s eyes, and she said “Thank you” as she swept the Pokémon up into a hug.

Amber released them, then pushed herself to her feet under reduced gravity, resettling her bag across her chest and on her right shoulder with one hand while the other set her staff to take her weight once she allowed gravity to return to normal. “Alright, y’all, let’s-”

“ **FEAROW!** ” Amber’s eyes snapped up, seeing the bird spearing straight towards them.

“Fuck.” Amber bladed her body, leaving gravity light to allow her to use her staff more readily. “Eevee, you got any ice or electric moves?”

“Uh… I have tackle?”

“Ah. Okay, then, stay back. Charmander, can you toss out a Will-o-Wisp? And Bulbasaur, herd it in to me.” Balanced mostly on her left leg, Amber began to spin her staff, testing its heft.

“ROW!” screeched the Beak Pokémon, wincing as the ghost-fire burned it but continuing on its beeline for Amber.

“Oh Seikamater, have mercy on your poor child,” came from behind Amber, but she only paid it peripheral attention, with the incoming Flying-type, who was starting to flag thanks to the burn from Charmander and bursts of telekinesis shoving it around, courtesy of Bulbasaur.

Amber closed one eye, then the staff (and its wielder) blurred into motion, both spinning into an ending pose that slammed the Fearow beak-first into the dirt accompanied by a muttered “Bop, motherfucker”.

It struggled weakly for a moment, then slumped over, unconscious.

“And that’s how you do that.” Amber allowed gravity to return to normal as she leaned on her staff, which she had removed from the Fearow.

“Thank you for saving me!” Amber turned, and-

“Huh. That is a shiny Caterpie.” Then, she blinked, restarting her brain. “Right, right, you’re welcome.”

“Wow, you can understand me! I’ve never seen a human who could speak Pokémon before!” The Worm Pokémon spit a thread that latched onto Amber’s bag, then climbed up to settle on top of it. “I want to stay with you! It sounds like it’ll be a nice adventure to travel with a human-Mew hybrid.”

Amber gave the other four Pokémon a look that plainly said “what the actual fuck”, but they all shrugged.

“Why, exactly, do I have two shiny Pokémon within one chapter of each other? I don’t exactly think this is going to endear me to the anti-Mary Sue crowd,” sighed the trainer.

“Maybe because there’s been almost no shiny Pokémon represented in fanfics, so it was about time someone caught one?” When all the other Pokémon all looked to Eevee, they blinked. “What?”

“Fair point, I guess.” Amber shrugged. “Alright, then. Time to go get a gift for the Augur, then prevent his assassination!”

“What.”

“Did I forget to mention that bit? Oops. Alright, so here’s the big things that happen in the next little bit…”

* * *

After about thirty minutes of trekking through the grassy forest and spending time battling some of the trainers on the route (including finding a Poké Ball for Caterpie), they came to Telnor Cave, where, thanks to watching Bulbasaur’s use of Confusion to bat around the trainers’ Pokémon, Eevee managed to learn at least the rudiments of psychic power, which they practiced by way of passing a fist-sized rock back and forth with Amber, helping both of them practice their skill with telekinesis.

It was while doing this that they arrived at the area where Damian was waiting, having climbed a ladder to do so.

“Hey, Amber. Sorry I ran off like that. I was just… you know…” He seemed subdued.

“Kind of overwhelmed?” Seeing his nod, Amber nodded in return. “I get that, everyone feels like it’s too much sometimes. Feeling better now?”

“Yeah, thanks. Let’s find the Rare Stone quickly, so we can get back to town.”

“He will not leave Telnor Town alive.” Amber’s jaw clenched as Damian’s dropped, but neither of them made much sound, whether thanks to foreknowledge or shock. “My agent is already in place. I assume yours is too?”

The two trainers looked up to a nearby bridge where two figures- one red-headed and one white-haired- stood, looking over the expanse of the underground lake.

“Yes,” replied the white-haired one, “and armed with their most powerful Pokémon as well. Rest assured, he will not depart from this town alive.”

“Very good. This Augur disgusts me.” Amber huffed out a little breath through her nose- she hadn’t remembered this from the game, but she wholeheartedly agreed with his disapproval of Jaern. “I could at least respect Adam as a proven Pokémon trainer, but this one is just useless. He’s practically brainwashed the entire region with all this propaganda he’s spread about himself. Have you heard how ridiculous some of it is?”He was born of fire and lightning, and rides Xerneas as a steed? He hasn’t been Augur for half a year, and already the people are worshipping him like some sort of Chosen of Arceus.”

“Well, we won’t have to worry about him after today, will we? Let’s get going.” With that, both cultists (because what else could they be, so openly discussing the murder of a man who was widely known to be “vital” to the operations of the region?) turned and left.

Damian turned to Amber frantically. “Did you hear that? We need to go warn the Augur!”

Amber nodded. “Alright, but first, where’s the Rare Stone?”

“Over on that island in the middle of the lake, why?” he asked, pointing at an outcropping of rock that could only generously be called more than a stalagmite.

“So I can snag it real quick and make sure we don’t come back empty-handed. I’ll meet you back out front of the cave with the stone.” Once Damian had gone back down the ladder, Amber focused, lightening gravity on herself to the point where she could walk atop the water’s surface and then proceeding to do just that, retrieving the Sun Stone that was on top before making use of her decreased weight to make long, bounding leaps that carried her to the entrance of the cave just after Damian had made it out.

“Wow, Amber, that was fast!”

“That was the point, kiddo,” said Amber, ruffling his hair. “Now let’s make tracks and see about getting back to Telnor Town before their agents reveal themselves.

The two did just that, greeted just as they entered town by Damian’s father. “Damian, Amber! You’re late! The Augur just got to the Town Hall.”

“Amber, we have to hurry! The Augur could be attacked any minute!” Damian rushed to the town hall, Amber’s bum leg slowing her down just enough that she burst in just in time to hear him shout “Mr. Augur, sir! We overheard some cultists in the caves, when we were getting you a Rare Stone, they were saying they had some agents in the town with powerful Pokémon! They were saying they were going to kill you!”

The room could have been more effectively silenced, but that would have likely necessitated the complete removal of the atmosphere.

“Now, that’s a very serious accusation, young man. Are you sure?” replied the Augur.

Before Damian could answer, his father stepped in. “I am so, so sorry about this, Sir Jaern.” Then, turning to Damian: “What are you saying? You’re embarrassing us!”

“Not as much as this,” drawled a blue-haired man next to the wall and another man with suspiciously dyed-looking hair. The two advanced in a manner that was likely supposed to be menacing towards Jaern.

“Ah. And who might you be?” asked Jaern, already suspecting the answer.

They both shrugged off their jackets to reveal round emblems, one a blue circle with a silhouette of Kyogre and the other a rust-red hexagon with Groudon’s silhouette on the front. “Cultists, here to kill you, of course.”

Damian would have rushed forward to throw his body in front of Jaern if Amber’s hand on his shoulder hadn’t stopped him. “You may regret that,” she said in her heaviest voice.

“Oh? And why is that, little lady?” the Groudon-marked one sneered.

The corner of Amber’s lip quirked up into a smirk. “Even beside the fact that the Augur stands on a level equal to the gym leaders? We aren’t exactly slouches ourselves, so  _ venga, cabrónes _ ,” she snarled.

“Oh-ho-ho, looks like someone’s been watching too many superhero movies!”

The Abyssal cultist nodded. “We’re cultists, dumbfuck. We have strong Pokémon and actual weaponry. This ain’t no main-series Pokémon game, we will actually murder you.”

The Infernal cultist stepped forward. “We’re only here for the Augur, baby. Step aside, and we’ll let you live. In fact, maybe we’ll even show you a good time.”

Amber actually laughed. “Did you dumbfucks actually just proposition me after threatening my life? Up yours,  _ puta madres _ .”

The Abyssal cultist didn’t reply- verbally, at least. He just sent out a Skrelp, which Amber met with Eevee. “You know what a pinball machine is?” asked Amber. Seeing Eevee’s nod, she grinned viciously. “You’re the flipper, then.”

Eevee’s Psychic onslaught, subtly helped by Amber’s redirection of the Poison-type’s personal gravity field, sent the little Pokémon bouncing all over the room, ending when it slammed into the Infernal Cultist’s just-released Numel, which sent them both firmly into the realm of unconsciousness.

“You’ll pay for that,” snarled the Infernal cultist, releasing his Slugma at the same time as the Abyssal cultist sent out a Horsea.

“Dude. You’re using a fucking Slugma. No, I won’t.” Amber tossed out Charmander for good measure just in time for a heavy rock slam into Eevee, throwing them backwards and, judging from the popping sound, dislocating at least one leg.

Amber blinked, then sighed, seeing the telltale light of evolution surrounding both Slugma and Horsea. “ _ Pinché _ midbattle evos,” she spat, calling back Eevee and replacing them with Caterpie. “Caterpie, keep the Seadra tied up as best you can. Charmander…” Amber frowned, slipping her Rotomphone from her pocket quickly to check Magcargo’s stats. Noting its oddly lower physical defense, she called “Confuse Ray, then smack it around some!”

“You bet!” Charmander exhaled a cloud of witchfire that surrounded the bemused Magcargo, and then, while it was distracted, closing in and scrabbling at its sides with a set of Fury Swipes.

“Magcargo, Rock Blast!” snapped the Infernal cultist. Still distracted by Charmander’s almost-hypnotic Confuse Ray, it fired a spread of rocks that missed Charmander, but clipped the now thoroughly wrapped-up Seadra multiple times, one carrying Caterpie away with it. Thinking quickly, the diminutive Bug-type spat out a quick String Shot, which went wide of the table but managed to latch onto Amber’s staff.

Realizing what they had planned, Amber turned, swinging the staff and surreptitiously dragging along the Shiny Pokémon with a covert application of her psychic powers, sending it slamming into the tied-up Seadra in a massive tackle. This, combined with the previous impact from Rock Blast, sent it into unconsciousness and prompting Caterpie to glow with its own evolutionary light.

Charmander had not been idle, figuring out how to combine Dragon-type energy with Scratch to homebrew a Dragon Claw and whittle down the Magcargo, occasionally pausing to breathe out another cloud of witchfire to renew the gradually-dissipating one hovering over her head.

“Ugh. Magcargo, Lava Plume!” This attack did not miss, molten rock surging out from the Fire-type and singeing Charmander.

“Ow ow ow! That hurt!” Charmander retaliated by breathing out a plume of ghostly energy in the Magcargo’s face, rendering it unconscious at last and giving Charmander enough experience to trigger the fourth evolution in this battle.

Seeing neither cultist go for another Pokémon after recalling their knocked-out duo, Amber sighed. “Pack it in, y’all. You’re done.”

The Abyssal cultist, reading the writing on the wall, raised their hands, but the Infernal cultist pulled a longknife from somewhere in their uniform and, sidestepping the Pokémon, lunged for Amber.

They didn’t make it close, with Amber’s staff smacking down onto the point of his wrist and sending the knife clattering to the floor even as the butt of the staff swept up into the cultist’s gut, slamming the air from their lungs and sending them stumbling back into the wall.

“Well, well, well. Trounced by one trainer using unevolved Pokémon. Impressive showing, young lady,” said Jaern, giving her a slow nod. “As for you two, I think some time in a cell before your trial will help us get to the bottom of this.  _ Aversa Custodia! _ ” In a flash of light, the two cultists were gone, sent off to (presumably) Helios City.

Damian blinked, confused. “Wait, I thought you said you were sending them to jail. Why did you kill them?”

Jaern laughed, then patted Damian on the shoulder. “Oh, no, young man. I just sent them to Helios City’s jail, where they will await their trial.” He turned to Amber. “My gratitude to you, young lady, although you didn’t truly need to fight them.”

“I probably didn’t need to, but I feel kinda weird letting other people fight people who went after me,” she said, almost pointedly.

Other than a minute widening of his eyes, he said nothing. “Regardless, I’m very impressed. You saw a threat, then dealt with that threat decisively, and I do believe that young Damian was about to do the same. You both have my gratitude, and if you ever pass through Helios City, feel free to stop by and greet me. I’d love to see how the two of you have grown.” He bowed to Amber and Damian, then turned to the rest of the townsfolk. “I thank you all for your hospitality, but I am afraid I must bid you farewell.” With this, he walked out of the building, then released his Salamence from its Poké Ball, mounted it, and flew away in a vaguely northward direction.

“The Augur just gave you a compliment,” said Damian’s father, looking kind of dazed. “I think your stepmother is going to have trouble making you stay after you saved the Augur from assassination. Damian, this is your chance to go on an adventure!”

“Yeah, I think so,” said Damian, looking rather awestruck. Then, he shook himself. “Right, we’d better get going. All my friends have probably already started training at the Trainer’s School in Midna Town!”

Damian turned to Amber. “Hey, are you planning to come too? It’s just on the other side of that cave we went to earlier today.”

Taking in his excited face, as well as the way his father was looking kind of worried, she nodded. “Sure thing, kiddo. Someone has to watch your back. Go on ahead, I’ll meet you in Midna Town.”

Taking the out that Amber gave him, Damian rushed from the room.

“Thank you for being willing to do this with him. His mother… well, she left when he was just a baby, and he’s always wanted to find out what happened to her,” said Damian’s father.

Amber shook her head, scooping up Metapod in her arms as she did so. “No worries. He’s a good kid.”

After she left the building and entered the forest, Amber released the rest of her Pokémon.

“Okay,” she said once they were all ready to listen to her. “I ran into Jaern today, and I think he’s one of the ‘he’s the best thing for the world’ kind of guys. I can’t 100% promise that that’s what he is, but that’s the read I got.”

Charmeleon nodded. “That’s what he seemed like to me.”

“I would take that with a grain of salt, since… you know… he kidnapped us,” deadpanned Bulbasaur.

“Oh, for sure. I don’t trust him as far as I can throw him under double gravity. I’m just spitballing about his motivation.” She thought for a moment, then raised a finger. “Oh, right. We’re also tagging along with Damian, because he’s a good kid.”

“That’s good, he really is a good kid,” agreed Squirtle.

“We’re off to Midna Town with him. It’s on the other side of the cave we ended up in earlier.” Amber nodded, then frowned. “Oh, right, Pokémon center. So let’s heal up, then head out.”

“Sounds good!” said Metapod, voice muffled by the shell.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And that’s that!
> 
> It’s,,, still Friday for me… I promise…
> 
> You didn't think I wouldn't have Butterfree in a series named after it, did you?
> 
> Kudos to anyone who picks up on the line I cribbed from MandJTV’s playthrough.
> 
> Still looking for a Beta, so if anyone’s interested lmk
> 
> Please read and review, and otherwise have a nice day!


	10. S1E10: *Time* for Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The required Tournament episode.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Parts of this (mostly dialogue) are quoted from the game.

This time, Amber made sure to take on the trainers in the forest and cave that she had skipped previously, managing to eke out more practice with Eevee’s Psychic powers in between battles.

Upon passing onto Route 1, she changed her training strategy, alternating between Squirtle, Metapod, and Bulbasaur to move them closer to evolution.

After a detour through the Dark Cave into the local garden, Amber made it to Midna Town, where she immediately checked in at the Pokémon Center to heal her Pokémon, and then proceeded to the Trainer’s School to try and register for the tournament.

“My apologies, ma’am. We’re currently unable to allow you to register for the tournament, since my paperwork-assistant cum tournament champion, Nora, is currently missing, and as such, we’re unable to register you,” said the teacher.

“Really.” Amber raised her eyebrows. “That sounds like you need to alter your paperwork situation to be more amenable to operation without her, since I don’t anticipate her sticking around forever.”

“Be that as it may, I am still as of yet unable to register you. If you went and got her from where she’s training in the local mine, I think you’d be able to register.” The teacher shrugged. “Otherwise, not so much.”

Amber pressed her hand to her face, covering one eye, then sighed. “Fine, fine. I’ll go get her.” Under her breath, she grumbled “Stupid author-mandated word count-padding fetch quest bullshit.”

And that was how she found herself spelunking through the mine.

“Am I the only one who hates the buzzing those lights make?” she asked, pointing up to indicate the string of incandescent bulbs hung from the ceiling.

“They’re definitely annoying, but I’m not sure I’d say ‘hate’,” replied Squirtle.

“I mean…” Amber trailed off while descending stairs, then sighed. “That’s fair, but the buzzing is still not the greatest of signs. Like, I know we could just have Charmeleon help us see if they went out, but it still kinda worries me, plus it’s starting to give me a headache.”

“Oh. I didn’t realize that.” Squirtle frowned.

“I mean… it’s not a huge deal, it just kinda hurts.”

They walked in silence until they got through to the room where a green-haired person was standing over four fossils on top of a raised area.

“Alright, the fossils are in place! You can do it, Celebi! I believe in you!” Releasing the Grass/Psychic Pokémon in question, she called out “Move these fossils through time! Use Tesseract!”

In a flash of green light, a Kabutops, Omastar, Bastiodon, and Armaldo stood there, blinking dumbly.

“You did it! I’m so proud of you!” She turned to look at the fossils, then sighed. “I can’t believe it. All of our hard work finally paid off! Who’d have ever thought that these Pokémon would see the light of day again?” She nodded, satisfied, then turned back to her Pokémon. “You can turn them back now, Celebi. I think we’re done for the day.” Another green flash left only fossils. “I can’t believe how far we’ve-”

She froze, looking  straight directly at Amber.

“Who are you? How much did you see?” she snapped, hopping off the raised platform and getting right in Amber’s face.

“Not a poacher, or a cultist, if that’s helpful. And I saw just about as far as the fossils coming back and then being unrevivified.” Amber stepped back, raising her non-staff-holding hand in front of her chest.

“Look, I… I don’t know who you are, but you can’t tell anyone about this! I’d be in grave danger!”

Just as Amber was about to speak, a pink bubble swelled into existence, then popped, revealing Mew. “Oh, hi, Celebi! What’s going on?”

“Mew? Is this your trainer?” replied Celebi.

“Not yet, but eventually I do plan to journey with Amber,” the Psychic-type giggled. “Is this yours?”

“Yes, I’m training with Nora so we can be ready to fight when the time comes.”

“Is that… Could it be? You were chosen by Mew?” Amber forced her attention back to the trainer as opposed to the two Mythical Pokémon. “I thought I was the only one! But if you were also chosen, then… hmm.”

“That I was,” drawled Amber. “Is there a particular reason that you not being the only one chosen by a Legendary is important?”

Nora nodded. “I should probably explain. Not many people know about it, but a long time ago, there was a prophecy written about Torren. Nobody knows it word for word, but it talks about the cults and the Augur. It said that a trainer, chosen by one of the legendary Pokémon, would be the one to find and defeat the cults. It also said that the legendary would be an Illusory one. You know, like Mew, Victini, or Hoopa. When they found out, the cults wanted to rid the world of that trainer. People were terrified. No one knew who the hero was, and they feared that this hero might never appear.”

Amber snorted at this. Sooner or later, some big-name trainer would come by, be they Ash or not, and wipe the floor with the cults, it was only a matter of time.

“But then the First Augur came, and he protected us. He was incredible, and took out half the cults on his own, but disappeared recently. People think the prophecy was about him because he was friends with Hoopa, but he’s gone now. Nobody-” well, not nobody, since at the very least Jaern, Persephone, and Amber knew, but they hadn’t exactly made his trip to the dream realm public knowledge yet- “-knows where he is. Augur Jaern’s trying to take his place, but the cults are all kicking into high gear, and he’s being run ragged all over the region trying to fight them all off at once, and I don’t think he was chosen by anyone. That’s why I can’t let anyone know about Celebi, there’s safety in obscurity. That’s why we’re training down here, in secret. I mean, I don’t think  _ I’m _ the hero of the prophecy, but… well, if Mew chose you, the prophecy could be about either of us. There might even be others.”

Nora looked Amber dead in the eyes. “You can’t let anyone know that Mew chose you. It hasn’t joined your team yet, has it? That’s probably because it’s worried about you becoming a target. So be careful from now on, we’re too valuable to risk.”

She looked at her watch, then sighed. “I’d better get going. Up in Midna Town, there’s a Trainer’s School I learn from. None of the other students are any good, but practice is practice. There’s a tournament about to start, so I need to get going.” She frowned, then her face lit up. “Hey, why don’t you enter too? It’s a good way to train and learn more about being a trainer. And you and I, we need all the training we can get.”

“Sounds like a plan to me, Nora. I was actually here to get you for that anyways, since I wanted to sign up and the teacher told me you were the paperwork wrangler.” Nora deflated a bit at this, but not too much.

“Alright, then I’ll see you up there.” Nora recalled Celebi, then released her Honedge, which cut a hole in space that lasted long enough for both them to pass through but collapsed after that.

Amber sighed. “She couldn’t let us go through.”

“Good luck with the tournament, Amber! I’ll be watching!” Mew vanished with a sound like a balloon popping and a flash of pink light.

Amber sighed, then released the rest of her Pokémon. “Alright then, team. Time to get ready for the-”

Amber blinked, surprised, as Metapod began to glow. “Well… I suppose that’s one way to get ready for the tournament.”

The now-Butterfree shivered, then shook its pink-tinted wings, still perched on the bright orange shell it had inhabited until now. “Wow, it really feels a lot different outside of that shell!”

Amber sighed, then nodded. “I suppose it would, now, wouldn’t it?”

* * *

The registration passed in a blur, thanks to Nora’s help streamlining the process, then it was straight into the first round, where Butterfree demolished the ninja boy’s Riolu and Tyrogue without much fuss, and only needed a moment of rest to be back to peak form.

Damian and Nora also advanced easily into the second round, where Amber found herself facing off with Damian. “No hard feelings, right, miss Amber?” asked Damian.

Amber laughed. “Let’s stay away from ‘miss’, why don’t we? I’m not that old yet, kiddo,” she said, grinning.

The teacher, who was serving as referee, blew a whistle, at which point both Amber and Damian let fly with their Poké Balls.

Squirtle ended up facing off with a Corphish, whose opening move, as per Damian’s orders, was an Icy Wind that ended up slowing her down fast enough for the Water-type to tag her with a Waterfall.

“Bite, then Beat Up!” suggested Amber. Squirtle nodded, then manage to snag one of the crustacean’s legs in her mouth.

Squirtle then thumped the floor, and in a flash of blue-green, a duplicate of each of the other members of Amber’s team appeared, outlined in that same Squirtle-colored light, before diving onto the Corphish, each landing one solid hit before dissipating.

The crawdad put up a valiant fight, but after Squirtle slammed her own blue-glowing paw into its underbelly, it tapped twice against the floor with one its claws, signaling to all and sundry that it wasn’t willing to continue the fight.

“Wow, your Squirtle’s really strong!” shouted Damian, sending out a Luxio at the same time.

Squirtle breathed in deeply, then turned to face this new opponent.

“Get in close, then pummel it!” shouted Damian, and in a flash of yellow-white electricity, Luxio obeyed, snarling. The electrical charge grounded out through Squirtle into the floor, then spun to kick out with both hind legs, sending Squirtle staggering back.

“Alright, Squirtle, pivot out!” The Dark/Fighting type in question nodded, and in one last burst of blue light kicked off from the Luxio’s chest, launching herself back towards Amber, who already had her Poké Ball out.

“Alright, Bulbasaur, try and capture it!” The quadrupedal Pokémon did so, lashing out with psychic power and smacking the Electric type skyward, then began juggling it with quick bursts of Psychic power. After about a minute of Luxio trying (and failing) to disrupt her concentration with Thundershocks, the judge called it, and Damian recalled his Pokémon.

“Alright, we’re down but not out! Get ready for a turnaround, Amber!” Matching word to action, Damian sent out his Eevee, which was wearing a scarf around its neck.

“Secret Power!” called Damian, causing Eevee to charge forward, electrical power propelling it forwards quickly.

“Trap it, then pin it!” shouted Amber.

Eevee slammed into Bulbasaur first, discharging its charge into Bulbasaur with a loud snapping sound and locking up her legs.

Unfortunately, Bulbasaur didn’t need her legs to fight.

A massive surge of psychic energies slammed into Eevee from below, and while the little Normal type didn’t hit the ceiling, it was a near thing. Damian recalled it before it could hit the ground, forfeiting the battle good-naturedly to Amber.

“Wow, Amber, you really trained your Pokémon well!” Damian grinned infectiously.

“You too, Damian,” said Amber. “Keep it up, and I wouldn’t be surprised if you could make a run at the League soon.”

Amber turned around to congratulate Bulbasaur just in time to see the characteristic light of evolution die down and reveal her as a Delta Ivysaur.

* * *

After a quick trip to the Pokémon center by both Amber and Nora, the two of them were ready for the finals match.

“Hey, no matter who wins, you’ve done well getting this far, Amber.”

“Thanks, Nora, you too.” Amber inclined her head and flicked two fingers off her forehead as a salute.

When the whistle was blown, Amber opened with Ivysaur, which immediately became a problem when Nora’s Honedge materialized on her side of the field.

“Oh, boy. Alright, Ivysaur, try and smack it around, like getting it stuck in the ground or something!”

The Psychic type tried to slam the possessed blade into the ground, but it sheathed itself too fast and bounced off even closer, before opening up with a Fury Cutter. A series of psychic impacts snapped out, each stronger than the last, but they either missed or had little effect.

Too late, Bulbasaur tried to wrap herself in a barrier of psychically corralled air, which didn’t protect it sufficiently from the Fury Cutter.

Amber recalled the beaten starter, then snapped Squirtle out, opening up with a “Beat Up, then Bite!” that made quick work of the opposing Ghost type.

Nora’s next Pokémon was a Trapinch, to which Amber responded by replacing Squirtle with Charmeleon.

The diminutive Ground type spent that time burrowing down into the ground, leaving Charmeleon without any targets for either direct attacks or more esoteric techniques like Will-O-Wisp. “Amber? What do I do?”

Amber pressed one hand to her eye, focusing on what she could hear from Trapinch’s mind. “Hang on…” There! She’d got a lock on where it was thanks to its own tremorsense. “Jump left, then Will-O-Wisp!”

Charmeleon wasn’t quite fast enough to dodge Trapinch’s jaws closing on its tail, but it managed to flare its tail flame within the Ant Pit Pokémon’s mouth, burning it there. This wasn’t enough to dissuade Trapinch, who clamped down harder despite wincing, and when it shook its head, Charmander’s head knocked against the floor, sending it into unconsciousness.

Squirtle returned to the battlefield, and thanks to the Trapinch’s distraction with the burn in its mouth, it didn’t react fast enough and was taken down by Beat Up clones of Eevee and Butterfree.

“Wow, you are good,” said Nora, grinning. “But now you have to deal with my ace!” She snapped her arm forward, and from her Poké Ball came a Bayleef.

Amber nodded. “Keep it up, Squirtle!” The Dark type did, pulsing out multiple Beat Up clones, but Bayleef breathed out a haze of Fairy-type energy that popped them like soap bubbles.

“Well then.” Amber pressed her lips together, then shook her head. “Okay, new plan. What other range have you managed to put together?”

“Uhh…” Squirtle backflipped away from another haze of Fairy Wind. “I might have Vacuum Wave?”

Amber laughed. “Actually, that’s about the perfect one. Go ahead and try and carve a path.”

Squirtle didn’t manage it immediately, due to having to keep evading, but eventually, she snapped out a punch that shoved a shockwave through the air to land on Bayleef’s flank, even managing to drag a little of the Fairy Wind residue with it.

“Alright, just keep it up!”

“Razor Leaf!” shouted Nora, and Bayleef swung its head-leaf to send tiny leaflike blades towards Squirtle, who barely managed to dodge by jumping off an Eevee Beat Up clone.

Amber and Squirtle both saw the gap that left in Bayleef’s defensive screen of Fairy Wind.

Two Beat Up clones and a Vacuum Wave later, Bayleef was staggering back, and another Vacuum Wave was enough to both finish off the Bayleef and kickstart Squirtle’s evolution.

After the lightshow and another quick trip to the Pokémon Center, Amber stood near the edge of town with Damian and Nora. “You moving on too?” asked Amber.

“Yeah. I figured that at this point I feel safe enough to go on the gym challenge, so I figure I might try and head to Suntouched City and take on Orion first.”

Damian was practically vibrating with excitement. “Hey, we’re going to fight Orion too! You wanna go together?”

Nora gave Amber a Look, which Amber responded to by mouthing “He knows” accompanied with a gesture that mimicked cat ears.

Nora sighed, then shrugged good-naturedly. “Sure, why not. But I do have a secret I need to tell you, that you need to keep absolutely quiet, once we get out into the wild.”

Damian saluted, and Amber had to fight down the urge to both snicker and squee. “You got it, miss Nora, ma’am!”

“By the way, we haven’t been properly introduced. I’m Nora, she/her,” said Nora, offering her hand to shake.

Amber froze for a moment, then took it. “Amber, she/they, and… well, I’ll wait until after your bombshell to drop my second one.”

“I look forward to it,” said Nora, grinning. She squeezed Amber’s hand one last hand, then let it go.

**End of Season 1**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so to clear this up: I absolutely know that Delta Squirtle can’t learn Beat Up normally, but… well, I’ve got a few ways I could explain this, ranging from improvements on Double Team to [Spoiler] to a combination of both, which I’m leaning towards at this point. (There should actually be a hint as to what the spoiler is, so if you look back and figure it out, I’ll… Honestly, I’m not sure. I’ll burn that bridge when/if I get to it.)
> 
> Well, we have confirmation on the nonbinary character, and... well. Spoilers.
> 
> Not 100% satisfied with the ending, but it works well enough, and I’m already cutting it close enough as it is.
> 
> In terms of scheduling, I’ll be posting… some other story, be it a oneshot or the start of a different SI for an actual murderworld, next posting time, then after that I’ll be back with Season 2.
> 
> Still looking for a beta, so if you’re interested, hit me up!
> 
> Please read and review, and have a nice day!


End file.
